The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s \u2014 The Grist<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nAwareness of our warming planet began way earlier than most people think, according to a fascinating article in The Grist<\/em><\/a>. \u201cPlenty of…people were concerned about a warming planet, not just scientists, in the years before 1970,\u201d says reporter Kate Yoder. That includes U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie \u201936 of Maine, a hero of the anti-pollution movement in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/09\/MC105_SXVI_B109.webp\")
In this early 1960s image, U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie \u201936 and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, with an unidentified park ranger, visit Maine\u2019s Cadillac Mountain, located within Acadia National Park. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nReporting on a soon-to-be-published paper in the journal Ecology Law Quarterly<\/em>, Yoder describes how Muskie\u2019s papers at Bates<\/a> provided the researchers with insights into the surprisingly widespread understanding of the perils of climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMuskie was deeply involved in conversations about climate change with scientists, and his staff tracked coverage of the topic closely in the press. In 1970, Muskie warned his fellow senators that if air pollution went unchecked, it would \u2018threaten irreversible atmospheric and climatic changes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nJean Johnson Bird \u201951<\/h4>\n\n\n\nA 94-year-old Waterville woman is a world traveler who has seen it all \u2014 Morning Sentinel<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nMaine\u2019s Morning Sentinel <\/em>interviewed Jean Johnson Bird \u201951<\/a> after she received a Silver Status award from The Travelers\u2019 Century Club for having visited 150 countries and territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHer first few countries on the road to 150 came shortly after graduating from Bates, when she and fellow students from Bates, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Dartmouth, and Yale traveled to Europe with the legendary Bates professor Rayborn Zerby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2024\/08\/e8da4424a41558403b9179a15a83246503c4e2b7-1.webp\")
Professor of Religion Rayborn Zerby teaches students about Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night<\/em> in 1954. Zerby taught the famed Cultural Heritage course at Bates, served as dean of the faculty, and led students from Bates and other colleges on summer tours of Europe. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe went by ship, you know. People didn\u2019t travel by airplane then,\u201d said Bird. \u201cCologne was devastated by World War II. We went to Switzerland and Capri, off Italy. I swam in the Blue Grotto. I jumped out of the boat and went swimming there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nDavid L\u00f3pez-Carr \u201993<\/h4>\n\n\n\nA planetary health innovation for disease, food, and water challenges in Africa \u2014 Nature<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nDavid L\u00f3pez-Carr \u201893, a professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been in the news for an award-winner paper in Nature<\/em> that offers a planetary health innovation<\/a> to address disease, food, and water challenges in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\nL\u00f3pez-Carr was part of an international team of biologists, social scientists, and medical researchers from the U.S. and Senegal that found a way to lower infection rates of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis by removing vegetation associated with a snail that plays host to the blood fluke. The removed plant material can be repurposed as cheap livestock feed and compost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2024\/08\/David-Lopez-Carr-senegal-uc-santa-barbara-small.webp\")
David L\u00f3pez-Carr \u201893 (second from left) works with research partners in Senegal. (University of California, Santa Barbara)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe team won a 2024 Sustainability Science Award<\/a> from the Ecological Society of America, amog other honors. Individually, L\u00f3pez-Carr received a 2024 Research Excellence Award from the Human Dimensions of Global Change and the 2024 CLAG Award from the Conference of Latin American Geography<\/a> for two decades of teaching, research, and mentorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nK-Fai Steele \u201904<\/h4>\n\n\n\nK-Fai Steele auctions rights to middle-grade graphic novel\u2014 Bleeding Cool<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2024\/08\/NormalPig-cover-245x300.webp\")
K-Fai Steele’s award-winning books include A Normal Pig<\/em>, which earned starred reviews from Kirkus<\/em>, Publishers Weekly<\/em>, and Booklist<\/em>.
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nBest Buds<\/em>, a middle-grade graphic novel by K-Fai Steele \u201904<\/a>, will be published by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in spring 2026, according to Bleeding Cool.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe site describes Best Buds<\/em> as \u201cfriendship that blooms between two girls over their love of gardening, library books, and crows, while exploring the roles they play in community care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is Steele\u2019s first graphic novel but hardly her first book<\/a>: She\u2019s the illustrator of seven prior children\u2019s books and the author\u2013illustrator of two. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nNathan Diplock \u201917<\/h4>\n\n\n\nPlant Physiology<\/em> spotlights First Authors \u2014 Plant Physiology<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nEmerging researcher Nathan Diplock \u201917, who recently earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, was profiled as a \u201cFirst Author\u201d by the academic journal Plant Physiology<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2024\/08\/Nathan-Diplock-e1724785353167-240x300.webp\")
Molecular biologist Nathan Diplock \u201917 recently earned a Ph.D. from Berkeley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWorking with researchers at Berkeley and the University of Melbourne, Diplock served as first author of a paper that explores a plant protein called ZAR1, which helps to detect harmful bacteria. ZAR1 works by monitoring how another plant protein, ZED1, interacts with a bacterial protein from a common plant pathogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The research team identified an important mutation in ZED1 that allowed a tomato plant to use its version of ZAR1 to recognize the bacterial invader, a discovery that could lead to new ways to enhance plant immunity against bacterial infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already the author of several papers, he told the Plant Physiology<\/em> that \u201cplants are capable of extraordinary physiology that can feel both familiar and foreign to the human experience. Plant science is our best tool to unravel these fascinating complexities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Bates biology major who worked in the Lewis Lab<\/a> at Berkeley, Diplock is now a research scientist at BluumBio, developing new technologies for phytoremediation and bioremediation of environmental contaminants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nMaple Buescher \u201925<\/h4>\n\n\n\nKid reporters, now first-time presidential voters, on the coverage of Election 2024 \u2014 Columbia Journalism Review<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nEight years ago, Maple Buescher \u201925 of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was a middle-school student reporting from the 2016 Republican National Conventions for Time for Kids<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA story in the Columbia Journalism Review <\/em>circles back to Buescher<\/a> and another former Time for Kids <\/em>reporter about their take on this year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Phyllis](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2023\/09\/230905_Convocation_03014.webp\")
In addition to serving as editor-in-chief of The Bates Student in 2023\u201324, Maple Buescher \u201825 is a violinist with the Bates Orchestra; here, she performs during the memorial tree planting service held each year after Convocation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nNow a senior politics major, Buescher served as Bates Student<\/em> editor-in-chief in 2023\u201324 and writes a regular column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019ve been fairly impressed by the amount of news and news analysis that has been produced in such an incredibly fast and challenging environment,\u201d Buescher told reporter Jaime Joyce. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve been impressed by the amount of just simple fact-checking that\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn the other hand, Buescher could do without the mainstream media’s awkward attempts to report on the intersection of pop culture and politics, like covering the whole \u201cKamala is brat<\/a>\u201d meme. \u201cPart of what makes the memes popular is the absurdity,” she says, “so trying to square the circle of the absurdity with the more serious political conversation is strange.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nJoyce writes that what young, engaged voters want \u201cis serious political conversation: sit-downs with the presidential candidates, questions about their records and what they plan to do, if elected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nLena LaPierre \u201926<\/h4>\n\n\n\nA Mississippian\u2019s journey from picking gentian plants in the Balkan mountains to drinking Moxie in Lisbon \u2014 Lewiston Sun Journal<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Awareness of our warming planet began way earlier than most people think, according to a fascinating article in The Grist<\/em><\/a>. \u201cPlenty of…people were concerned about a warming planet, not just scientists, in the years before 1970,\u201d says reporter Kate Yoder. That includes U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie \u201936 of Maine, a hero of the anti-pollution movement in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reporting on a soon-to-be-published paper in the journal Ecology Law Quarterly<\/em>, Yoder describes how Muskie\u2019s papers at Bates<\/a> provided the researchers with insights into the surprisingly widespread understanding of the perils of climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMuskie was deeply involved in conversations about climate change with scientists, and his staff tracked coverage of the topic closely in the press. In 1970, Muskie warned his fellow senators that if air pollution went unchecked, it would \u2018threaten irreversible atmospheric and climatic changes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maine\u2019s Morning Sentinel <\/em>interviewed Jean Johnson Bird \u201951<\/a> after she received a Silver Status award from The Travelers\u2019 Century Club for having visited 150 countries and territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her first few countries on the road to 150 came shortly after graduating from Bates, when she and fellow students from Bates, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Dartmouth, and Yale traveled to Europe with the legendary Bates professor Rayborn Zerby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe went by ship, you know. People didn\u2019t travel by airplane then,\u201d said Bird. \u201cCologne was devastated by World War II. We went to Switzerland and Capri, off Italy. I swam in the Blue Grotto. I jumped out of the boat and went swimming there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n David L\u00f3pez-Carr \u201893, a professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been in the news for an award-winner paper in Nature<\/em> that offers a planetary health innovation<\/a> to address disease, food, and water challenges in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n L\u00f3pez-Carr was part of an international team of biologists, social scientists, and medical researchers from the U.S. and Senegal that found a way to lower infection rates of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis by removing vegetation associated with a snail that plays host to the blood fluke. The removed plant material can be repurposed as cheap livestock feed and compost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team won a 2024 Sustainability Science Award<\/a> from the Ecological Society of America, amog other honors. Individually, L\u00f3pez-Carr received a 2024 Research Excellence Award from the Human Dimensions of Global Change and the 2024 CLAG Award from the Conference of Latin American Geography<\/a> for two decades of teaching, research, and mentorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Best Buds<\/em>, a middle-grade graphic novel by K-Fai Steele \u201904<\/a>, will be published by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in spring 2026, according to Bleeding Cool.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The site describes Best Buds<\/em> as \u201cfriendship that blooms between two girls over their love of gardening, library books, and crows, while exploring the roles they play in community care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is Steele\u2019s first graphic novel but hardly her first book<\/a>: She\u2019s the illustrator of seven prior children\u2019s books and the author\u2013illustrator of two. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emerging researcher Nathan Diplock \u201917, who recently earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, was profiled as a \u201cFirst Author\u201d by the academic journal Plant Physiology<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Working with researchers at Berkeley and the University of Melbourne, Diplock served as first author of a paper that explores a plant protein called ZAR1, which helps to detect harmful bacteria. ZAR1 works by monitoring how another plant protein, ZED1, interacts with a bacterial protein from a common plant pathogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research team identified an important mutation in ZED1 that allowed a tomato plant to use its version of ZAR1 to recognize the bacterial invader, a discovery that could lead to new ways to enhance plant immunity against bacterial infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Already the author of several papers, he told the Plant Physiology<\/em> that \u201cplants are capable of extraordinary physiology that can feel both familiar and foreign to the human experience. Plant science is our best tool to unravel these fascinating complexities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Bates biology major who worked in the Lewis Lab<\/a> at Berkeley, Diplock is now a research scientist at BluumBio, developing new technologies for phytoremediation and bioremediation of environmental contaminants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eight years ago, Maple Buescher \u201925 of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was a middle-school student reporting from the 2016 Republican National Conventions for Time for Kids<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A story in the Columbia Journalism Review <\/em>circles back to Buescher<\/a> and another former Time for Kids <\/em>reporter about their take on this year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now a senior politics major, Buescher served as Bates Student<\/em> editor-in-chief in 2023\u201324 and writes a regular column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019ve been fairly impressed by the amount of news and news analysis that has been produced in such an incredibly fast and challenging environment,\u201d Buescher told reporter Jaime Joyce. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve been impressed by the amount of just simple fact-checking that\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, Buescher could do without the mainstream media’s awkward attempts to report on the intersection of pop culture and politics, like covering the whole \u201cKamala is brat<\/a>\u201d meme. \u201cPart of what makes the memes popular is the absurdity,” she says, “so trying to square the circle of the absurdity with the more serious political conversation is strange.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Joyce writes that what young, engaged voters want \u201cis serious political conversation: sit-downs with the presidential candidates, questions about their records and what they plan to do, if elected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nJean Johnson Bird \u201951<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A 94-year-old Waterville woman is a world traveler who has seen it all \u2014 Morning Sentinel<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nDavid L\u00f3pez-Carr \u201993<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A planetary health innovation for disease, food, and water challenges in Africa \u2014 Nature<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nK-Fai Steele \u201904<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
K-Fai Steele auctions rights to middle-grade graphic novel\u2014 Bleeding Cool<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nNathan Diplock \u201917<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Plant Physiology<\/em> spotlights First Authors \u2014 Plant Physiology<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nMaple Buescher \u201925<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Kid reporters, now first-time presidential voters, on the coverage of Election 2024 \u2014 Columbia Journalism Review<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nLena LaPierre \u201926<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A Mississippian\u2019s journey from picking gentian plants in the Balkan mountains to drinking Moxie in Lisbon \u2014 Lewiston Sun Journal<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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