Meghan Bartels

2 days ago | scientificamerican.com | Meghan Bartels |Jeffery DelViscio |Fonda Mwangi |Alex Sugiura |Rachel Feltman

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to part two of our three-part series on the battle against bird flu. On Monday we followed flocks of wild birds to learn how new strains of avian influenza emerge and spread. Today we’re headed out to pasture to check out the next link in the chain from shorebird to human: poultry and dairy farms. Our host today is Meghan Bartels, a senior news reporter at Scientific American. Here’s Meghan now.

4 days ago | scientificamerican.com | Meghan Bartels

Editor’s Note (6/23/25): This story will be updated with additional images and details shortly after 11 A.M. EDT. Welcome to a mind-blowing new era of astronomy. The long-awaited Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a cutting-edge new telescope perched atop a mountain in Chile, is releasing its first images of the universe on June 23—and its views are just as jaw-dropping as scientists hoped.

1 week ago | booboone.com | Meghan Bartels

Here's How Plastic Bag Bans Are WorkingData from beach cleanups show that banning or taxing single-use plastic bags makes a difference in ecosystemsBy Meghan Bartels edited by Allison Parshall For one in three U.S. residents, single-use plastic bags are no longer a cheap and easy ubiquity-and beaches, riverbanks and lakeshores are benefitting. That's according to research published on June 19 in Science.

1 week ago | scientificamerican.com | Meghan Bartels

For one in three U.S. residents, single-use plastic bags are no longer a cheap and easy ubiquity—and beaches, riverbanks and lakeshores are benefitting. That’s according to research published on June 19 in Science.

2 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Meghan Bartels

We Earthlings see the sun every day of our lives—but gaining a truly new view of our star is a rare and precious thing. So count your lucky stars: for the first time in history, scientists have photographed one of the sun’s elusive poles. The images come courtesy of a spacecraft called Solar Orbiter. Led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with contributions from NASA, Solar Orbiter launched in February 2020 and has been monitoring our home star since November 2021.