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The Cary Institute has embarked on an ambitious study that will test environmental interventions with the potential to reduce tick-borne disease in neighborhoods. The goal: to lower Lyme disease rates and protect public health. 

Whoever named the "temperate zone" must have had a sense of humor. I'm writing this during a week of humid, 90-degree days, and just a few months ago it was 13 below, a stiff north wind providing the icing on that frozen cake. Since then, we've had rain, snow, sleet, warm spells, cold snaps and thunderstorms.

You shouldn't put illegal drugs in your body, and you shouldn't let neighborhood bodies of water ingest them, either. A new study suggests that aquatic life in Baltimore is being exposed to drugs, and it's having an impact.

New research has added to the growing body of evidence that the chemicals we put in our bodies often end up in our waterways — with noticeable consequences. 

Pharmaceutical and illicit drugs are present in streams in Baltimore, Maryland. At some sites, amphetamine concentrations are high enough to alter the base of the aquatic food web. 

When the scientists behind an ambitious tick study began their work in April, they did not know how many Dutchess County families would be willing to grant access to their properties and personal health information.

Likens is best known for co-discovering acid rain in North America and identifying fossil fuel combustion as the cause of increasing precipitation acidity. This work has influenced governmental policy, particularly the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

It's the early bird that gets the Cheetos. But it's the bigger bird that steals it away.

Behavioral ecologist Rhea Esposito used the snack food to see how two types of smart birds— smaller magpies and bigger crows — interact and compete for food.

Ecologists put on an unconventional fashion show at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Each showcased a custom-made garment that artistically depicted his or her own field of research, the organism or environment to which they’d devoted their life and careers — their hearts on their sleeves.

In coastal communities, the fear of rising sea levels has put climate adaptation and resilience planning at the forefront of shoreline management programs in recent years. But for inland water communities, the impacts of climate change, while perhaps not as obvious as regular coastal flooding events or as scary as sea level rise predictions, are no less real.

Now that Florida has become ground zero for locally-transmitted Zika virus in the United States, researchers are scrambling to quantify the risk to other regions of the country.

On a Thursday morning in May, I follow researcher Kelly Oggenfuss into the forest on the grounds of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. Stopping at an orange flag, she picks up a footlong metal box. With a gloved hand, she extracts a terrified-looking rodent. "These guys," she says, pinching the mouse between the shoulder blades, "are really good at passing along Lyme disease to ticks."

International Business Machines Corp said on Wednesday it would provide its technology and resources to help track the spread of the Zika virus.

Every spring when the weather gets delightfully warm enough, my wife and I walk the shoreline of our property on Cobscook Bay, to pick up all human-associated debris that has accumulated during the past year—plastic bottles, work gloves, fish crates, old tires, and especially nylon rope.

In the winter, rock salt is routinely spread on our roads to keep them free of ice. We now know that the rock salt can enter into our soil, groundwater, rivers and streams and can stay there year-round, effecting the ecosystem and people. 

Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillovers has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.

Two-thirds of the diseases which infect humans are thought to originate from animals. Is it possible to predict where new disease outbreaks may occur in the future?

Mosquito-borne diseases pose a growing risk to public health in urban areas. Asian tiger mosquitoes are a vector of high concern as they thrive in cities, live in close association with people, and can reproduce in very small pools of water.

Why is it that diseases emerge from some species and not from others? Is it possible to predict outbreaks of infectious diseases before they occur? 

A wide range of drugs - everything from antibiotics to antihistamines, are showing in our rivers, streams and water supply and it is having an impact on our environment. What can we do about it?