Nicola Jones

The flu all but disappeared during the pandemic, but now it's back with a vengeance. This year, it is hitting kids in Canada particularly hard, with pediatric hospitalizations spiking high and early and outpacing the 65+ group. My story in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04408-7

As the world warms, more birds are becoming reliant on parasitic plants like mistletoe, which are extraordinarily common and a reliable source of berries as other plants face shifting seasons. But, at the same time, mistletoes are struggling to survive droughts and heatwaves. Read all about it in Knowable magazine. https://knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2022/mistletoes-warming-world

Just for the record, here are some more great pieces in Nature that I edited this year... Rewilding Argentina : how to bring jaguars and capabaras back to the jungle, and get tourists to pay for it. (March) Cement and Steel: nine steps to zero     This piece lays out the best ways to whittle down emissions from some of our dirtiest (and most vital) industries. (March) Make units of measure 'machine readable' . Amusingly, many scientists use sloppy units of measure, such as calling 'kilocalories' just 'calories' for short, or using the same letter (m) to mean two different things. How are computers meant to make sense of this? Some researchers are now intent on sorting this out. (May) Floating solar power could help fight climate change — let’s get it right Are we running out of room to put solar panels, and are reservoirs the best spot to put them? Maybe. But more research is needed on the environmental side-effects. (June) Scaling up small fisheries : b...