Donating your physique, and local weather change momentum

Rebecca George doesn’t thoughts the vultures that complain from the timber that encompass the Western Carolina College physique farm. Her arrival has interrupted their breakfast. George research human decomposition, and a part of decomposing is turning into meals. Scavengers are welcome.

George, a forensic anthropologist, locations the physique of a donor within the Forensic Osteology Analysis Station—referred to as the FOREST. That is Enclosure One, the place donors decompose naturally above floor. Close by is Enclosure Two, the place researchers examine our bodies which were buried in soil. She is the ability’s curator, and screens the donors—typically for years—as they grow to be nothing however bones. 

Within the US, about 20,000 folks or their households donate their our bodies to scientific analysis and schooling every year. Regardless of the purpose, the choice turns into a present. Western Carolina’s FOREST is among the many locations the place watchful caretakers know that the useless and the dwelling are deeply related, and the best way you deal with the primary displays the way you deal with the second. Learn the total story.

—Abby Ohlheiser

We’re excited to share this primary piece from our forthcoming mortality-themed problem, out there from 26 October. If you wish to learn it when it comes out, you’ll be able to subscribe to MIT Know-how Overview for as little as $80 a 12 months.

Local weather motion is gaining momentum. So are the disasters.

In latest months, we’ve witnessed gorgeous progress on local weather motion—and terrifying indicators of the risks we’ve unleashed.

The US lastly stepped up as a pacesetter in local weather motion, enacting a trio of main legal guidelines that might add as much as the most important federal funding ever into local weather and clean-energy applied sciences, and renewables, electrical automobiles, and meat options are actually aggressive mainstream choices.

However in so many different methods, we’re getting began tragically, disastrously, unforgivably late. Whereas we’re setting ourselves as much as make sooner progress sooner or later, the measure that issues most has continued to rise: world emissions reached their highest stage ever in 2021. So we now have to redouble our efforts to speed up emissions reductions—and quick. Learn the total story.

This essay is an prolonged model of the opening speak that James Temple will ship this morning at ClimateTech, MIT Know-how Overview’s inaugural local weather and power convention working right this moment and tomorrow. Register for last-minute tickets and observe together with the most recent updates on our liveblog. 

The moms of Mexico’s lacking use social media to seek for mass graves