I'm Earl Lane. I'm the Executive Director
of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards and welcome to our ceremony
for the 2023 winners of these international awards. I'd like to thank our screeners
and judges for coming up with another terrific
group of winners. Every year it's just remarkable
the kinds of people that we get the award for. We had more than 1200 entries
for this group and from a record 74 nations. For the first time since we started going global with this in 2015, the majority of
the entries, 54%, were international,
rather than from the United States. So it's truly becoming
a very global contest. And we're just– we're very proud of that. Some of the people who are going
to be coming up this evening are winners from Australia, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Austria, United Kingdom. So let's get to it. Hillary Rosner is going to be our moderator. She's a two-time winner of the award and is a past judge for the contest as well. She's a freelance science writer
and also assistant
director of the program for Environmental Journalism
at the University of Colorado, Boulder. So, Hillary. Let me add one other thing. Stacey Bailey,
the Director of Communications for the Kavli Foundation,
who loves to come to these things, her flight was canceled yesterday. She got on another flight today that was 4 hours late. So she's not going to be here
in time to make the– in fact she bailed out, but she gave
her best wishes to everybody and congratulations to the winners. Thank you Earl.
It's great to be here. It's great to see you all in person, and also thank you
for coming on this snowy, snowy evening. And I hope some of you,
at least who are not from the area, got to experience some sunshine here
before it turned into this. It's really an honor to be here hosting these awards. Obviously, I don't have to tell you guys
how vital science journalism is. It seems it's more vital
with every passing year. And these awards are just such
a wonderful reminder of the great work that p
assionate and diligent
and talented journalists, like all of you in this room, are doing despite
the continuously evolving challenges. So congratulations to all the winners and it's really just such an honor
to be hosting this. So I know
Earl has us on a very tight schedule, so I will introduce Sudip Parikh, the CEO of AAAS and Executive Publisher of the Science family of journals. Thanks, Hillary. And Earl I was visualizing Stacey jumping
out of that plane when you said bail out. So I'm hoping
that she got out
before the plane took off. Thank you all. And I'm so glad to see everybody here at these awards. Every time I come–
and this is the first time since 2020 we've done this in person. And by the way, I want to–
I would rather clap for that. I think it's extraordinary to do this in person. Every time I do this, I'm just amazed
by the diversity of stories, by the storytelling that is that is a hallmark of the winners
of this award. Because it's that storytelling –
storytelling in som
e cases about things that we're not proud of,
eugenics and race science sometimes about things
that we're incredibly excited about, like, like the cosmos
and our better understanding of it and sometimes work that is, that tells a story that helps to influence us
to save endangered species – that is,
that's extraordinary and that is powerful. And it is important. And, you know,
I don't want to just allude to it. I just want to say that I'm worried
about the profession of journalism. I'm deeply tr
oubled by what I see,
and the fact that I see these incredible stories and the influence that you still have tells me that we have to,
we have to work together to figure out how to ensure
there is a business model for journalism, a business model that works,
and a business model that allows us to have this voice that both can celebrate science
when that's deserved, and that can shine a light on us and hold us accountable
when we don't deserve it. And so I just want to let you know that
AAAS is
incredibly supportive of science journalism, and that we're here
and that we want to be partners with you all as we figure this– as we as we navigate
this terrain that is, that is challenging. It is with that in mind that I think of of the fact
that throughout that adversity, throughout those challenges, throughout
whatever there is the resilience of you all
and again, the stories that have been told, are rival anything that's been written in the past,
and frankly may exceed. And that is extraor
dinary. That you do that
with resilience and with the absolute spirit
that you bring to this. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for all that
you bring to your profession. Now, before I turn it back over to Hillary,
I did want to, I did want to actually point out Earl,
because, you know,
I got here four years ago to the AAAS, and Earl had already been an institution
of being here for 20 years. And I don't think he knew how much change and growth he would have to manage
for this award progra
m. But this is, this is a special award
program. And it's special for many reasons, but one of the most important reasons
is because of Earl's leadership. And so I didn't want to let
the moment pass without recognizing Earl's incredible
leadership of this award ceremony. Now, with all that said, I want to
end this on a high note, which is that the stories in here,
they give me hope. They give me optimism.
And they give me a plan. And when you put those
three things together, you can actually mak
e the world
a better place. So thank you all for what you do. I'm going to turn it back over to Hillary. Thanks, Sudip. And I just want to echo that. It's true. Like looking out and seeing all of you
and reading the stories that won awards, it really is– it does fill me with hope as well. It's really inspiring and that's partly
why I'm so happy to be up here being a part of it tonight. So without further ado, let's meet our winners. For Excellence in Science Reporting Small Outlet, the Silver Aw
ard goes to Duda Menegassi of O Eco in Brazil. Her story told how researchers
are racing against the destruction of the Amazon
to ensure the survival of the Mato Grosso titi monkey, one of the world's
most endangered primates. Menegassi accompanied a research team
deep into the rainforest for on the ground
reporting about a single pair of monkeys isolated in one patch of forest
surrounded by farmland. The expansion of agriculture, new road
networks, urban development and the construction
of hydr
oelectric plants all affect the monkeys' habitat
and prospects for survival. Menegassi is our first award
winner from Brazil. Duda? Wow. As the first one,
I was not expecting that. Okay. Thank you. I want to thank,
of course, AAAS for this award. It means a lot, not just to me individually,
but to science– Brazilian science journalism
as well. As Hillary said, it's the first time
a Brazilian vehicle wins it. So I'm truly, truly honored. And I know time is short for the speech,
but I just need to
thank O Eco for being the vehicle
that has supported me in going after those stories
and talking about biodiversity and very sensitive environmental issues
that we are dealing with in Brazil. So truly honored. Thank you so much. Alright. The Gold Award for Science Reporting
Small Outlet goes to freelancer Christine Peterson for three stories
in WyoFile, a local Wyoming news site. Peterson tackled wildfire– wildlife stories
with attention to questions not often explored. In a piece on chipmunks
captured for research, she delved into the question of whether
surviving animals should eventually be released back into the wild
rather than euthanized. In a piece about reducing
the number of wolves in North America, she wrote that wolf populations can recover quickly from culling,
but their social structures don't. Peterson also wrote about a young buck
deer born of a beleaguered doe. After the harsh winter of 2017,
the fawn remained stunted, even as a two year old,
which was a surprise to re
searchers. Christine? Thank you AAAS, and it's just really an honor to win
something like this from a state like Wyoming
that doesn't have a lot of us reporting. And just so many thanks to all the researchers
who were willing to answer questions and take deep breaths and explain things
in really broken down ways to people like me. For excellence in Science
Reporting for a Large Outlet, the Silver Award goes to Sarah Kaplan, Simon Ducroquet,
Bonnie Jo Mount, Frank Hully-Jones and Emily
Wright of
the Washington Post for "Hidden Beneath the Surface," a comprehensive multimedia story on Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada. Perhaps more than any place on earth,
the lake holds evidence that humans have changed the planet's chemistry
and climate in such fundamental ways that some scientists argue
that it should serve as a marker for a new chapter in geologic
time called the Anthropocene. The Post team could not send
a representative, but Sarah Kaplan, a lead reporter on the project, and now a tw
o-time
winner of the AAAS Kavli Award, thanks the judges and told us
"The bottom of Crawford Lake records an incredible story about humanity's
escalating influence on the planet. We sought to immerse readers in the
lake's sediments, plunging them through layers of pollen,
soot and radioactive material so they can understand
why some scientists believe people created a new epoch in Earth's
geologic history." Congratulations
to the Washington Post team. And the Gold Award for Science Reporting. La
rge Outlet goes to Lauren Sommer, Ryan Kellman, Rebecca Hersher, Connie Hanzhang Jin and Daniel Wood of NPR for "Beyond the Poles:
The far reaching dangers of melting ice," a series that showed how scientists are finding direct
and sometimes surprising connections between climate change in the Arctic
and Antarctic and disruptive events even closer to home. The NPR team used text
and supporting multimedia resources to vividly explain how phenomena
occurring thousands of miles away are producing s
ea level rise
along the coast of Texas, increasingly destructive wildfires
in the western United States, and changes in the feeding behavior
of right whales in the North Atlantic. Lauren Sommer will accept the award. Thanks so much. We started this project because ice feels
really far away to most of us. It's not in our everyday lives. And we were reading so many studies
just about the strange, bizarre ways it was affecting communities
around the globe. And it's the kind of project that's hard
t
o get support for from your newsroom. It involves faraway travel,
it involves a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of phone calls
for some very complex emerging science. So thank you to NPR and all the members
that support their stations for supporting this. Thank you to AAAS for really recognizing science
journalism and why it really matters and why it's so important and it helps us
all do more work and better work. So we appreciate it. Thank you so much. The Silver Award
for Science Repo
rting In-Depth goes to Kemi Busari
for his investigation of a bogus doctor selling an herbal cure-all
for malaria and other ills. Busari, Nigeria editor for Dubawa,
an African fact-checkers organization, found that hundreds of thousands [of bottles]
of the brew were likely sold monthly. Distressingly,
the fake doctor was urging people to turn away from hospitals
and modern medicine and trust in the power of his brew,
particularly for children. Busari reported muddled regulatory
oversight and con
cerns by scientists about the possible health
risks of the concoction. He arranged for independent testing of the product.
Days after his story was published by Dubawa and Nigeria's Premium Times, the Nigerian Food and Drug Agency
confirmed the arrest of the bogus doctor and announced a nationwide mop
up of the toxic concoction. The judges praised the immediacy
and impact of the story. Kemi? Hi. Good evening. Around this time last year, I was very deep into the story
and if at that period someon
e told me that I would be on stage
to receive a science journalism award, I would highly doubt it. But here I am.
What I wanted to do was just to tell a story,
and try to help people see a lot of Nigerians consume
concoctions and unknown to them some of them are poisonous,
which is the case in the particular one that we checked. So I'd like to send a very big
thank you to my team at Dubawa. This award is dedicated to them.
And a very big thank you to the AAAS, the team
at AAAS for recognizing me
for this. Thank you. The Gold Award for Science
Reporting In-Depth goes to Ashley Smart of Undark, an online magazine,
for a piece on the lingering impact of scientific racism,
including the appropriation of legitimate genetics
research for extremist ends. The more reputable studies
do not directly take up the question of racial difference,
Smart noted, "but they explore themes that have long interested
race scientists: Some catalogue human genetic variation
by continent, while others probe how
genes influence
cognitive ability, propensity to violence,
and other complex traits." As their research is twisted
to serve racist claims, he wrote, "Many geneticists are weighing
the societal risks of their work and confronting an unsettling possibility:
that some of their most common practices and conventions
may serve to perpetuate the myth of race as a biological category
and help fuel scientific racism." Ashley? So I have to thank Brooke Borel,
who very skillfully and patiently edited
all
6000 words of that piece. And also– I'm blanking– Hannah Docter-Loeb, who did an amazing job fact
checking it, saved me time and time again. So this piece was actually part of part
of a longer series that we did at Undark on race
science called "Long Division." And I'll just say with my time here
that if you haven't read that entire series,
I would highly recommend you read it. It's heavy, but it's also, I think, some of the most nuanced
and sophisticated reporting on the topic that you'll find.
Done
by an amazing team of reporters. And so it was an honor
to be a part of that team, and it's an honor to see the work
recognized with the Kavli Award. Thank you. The Silver Award in the Magazine category
goes to Paul Tullis, a Netherlands based freelancer for a story
in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that asked: is the next pandemic brewing on the Netherlands' poultry farms? Highly pathogenic
avian influenza used to be a disease that almost exclusively affected poultry,
but in 2004,
it spread to wild birds in China. Infected wild birds are often
asymptomatic and can migrate, carrying the flu virus. Outbreaks
of a highly pathogenic avian flu required the culling of nearly 4 million birds
on more than 60 Dutch farms in 2022. The greater the number of infected birds,
the greater the risk of mutations that can allow the deadly virus
to jump to humans. "There's now a real concern that the spread of the virus that originated
with human activity — mass poultry farming — is now com
ing around to bite
humans back," Tullis wrote. Paul was unable to join us, but he said he is grateful
that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continues to fund such deeply reported
enterprise features on public health. Congratulations to Paul. And the Gold Award for the Magazine
category goes to Lauren Fuge for her story in Cosmos,
an Australian Science magazine, about the Grove of Giants
in southern Tasmania. She strapped on a harness
and scaled a 262-foot blue gum tree to join researchers
studying canopies aloft teeming with life. "My hands gripped the rope with opposable
thumbs that stuck in our evolutionary line because they're useful for grasping
branches," she wrote. "We were shaped by forests for millennia before we became Homo sapiens. My muscles may have forgotten
how to climb, but this isn't a journey into the unknown: it's a return." Lauren was unable to join us,
but she said climbing into the canopy was, "an intensely
profound experience for me, and it's gratifying to s
ee that experience
resonating across continents, especially in this time of crisis when we must recognize
our interconnections with each other and with all the beings
we share a world with." She also thanks Ian Connellan,
Rob Blakers and Steve Pearce for the striking photography
associated with her story. Congratulations. For Video Spot News Feature Reporting The Silver Award
goes to Bahar Dutt, Samreen Farooqui, Vijay Bedi, Anmol Chavan, and Ajay Bedi for a story on Roundglass Sustain, an onlin
e site in India. They told of efforts by biologist
Ayushi Jain to save the giant softshell turtle once found in South and East Asia
and now on the verge of extinction. Dutt joined Jain on her motor scooter
as they raced to a nesting site where turtle eggs have been taken from the wild to prevent their loss
due to rising river waters. They arrived in time to see the hatchlings
gingerly emerge, one of the few times a hatching of
the rare turtle has been documented. Jain warned that more research r
esources
are urgently needed to protect the turtles. A strong
first step is the local community's acceptance of her research
and conservation efforts. A crowd of local residents
accompanied Jain and her colleagues when they released the
batch of hatchlings. Bahar Dutt? Congratulations. Thank you so much. I've traveled a long way for this, so I'm going to take some time. Who would have thought
that a tiny little film on the Asian giant softshell
turtle would make such big strides? A turtle that's
as critically endangered
as the tiger but never seems to get the attention
it deserves. I would like to thank scientist
Ayushi Jain, for trusting our craft, the fishermen community that's taken it
upon themselves to save this species, my co-winners Anmol Shavan, Ajay Bedi
and Samreen Farooqui. I'd like to thank our broadcasters
Roundglass Sustain for creating a magical platform
for Indian wildlife filmmakers to tell their own stories
in their own way. This award– I'd like to particularly
thank
the editor of the film Vijay Bedi,
who, incidentally, is also my husband, for not just beautifully making the film, but for believing in my ability
to tell the story in my own way. Lastly, I would like to thank
and also dedicate this award to my father SP Dutt, a man of science
who we lost to COVID. I know this is his blessing from heaven. So thank you all and have a great night. The Gold Award for Video Spot News Feature
Reporting goes to Emily Driscoll and Jeffery
DelViscio of Scientific Amer
ican for a video about the quest
to save parasites. Scientists are becoming increasingly aware
of the vital role parasites such as fleas, ticks,
leeches, tapeworms and mosquitoes can play in keeping ecosystems in balance. While not particularly loveable, many of these hangers-on have been with their hosts
for much longer than humans have existed. Lemurs and their parasites, for instance, are thought to have evolved together
for the past 60 million years. Now, 10% of parasites
could face extincti
on from climate change over the next half century,
according to Colin Carlson, a global change biologist. Both Emily and Jeff are here this evening. Come on up. Hello. It is an incredible honor
to receive this award. I would like to thank executive producer
Jeff DelViscio, and Scientific American for sharing
and creating short documentaries. We created this film to highlight the important role parasites
play in nature and the researchers that are dedicated to their conservation
and study. Parasi
tes in nature
are disappearing at an alarming rate due to climate change,
and that affects all of us. So this award will further draw attention to parasites
and all of the ways that climate change affects us
that we may not realize. So thank you so much to AAAS and Kavli for this recognition. And I just want to add an extra
thanks to AAAS and Kavli, because in a lot of ways these stories
are really difficult to tell. They take a lot of time and a lot of money
and just the recognition, but also a
little bit of financial help
for the makers, especially in the ecosystem
that we have for journalism, it couldn't mean more at this point because we all know
what's happening in the industry and having both the recognition,
a little bit of financial support really goes a long way
to help these stories continue to happen. So thank you very much. For Video In-Depth Reporting, the Silver Award goes to Jared Lipworth,
Geoff Luck, Whitney Beer-Kerr
and Matt Hill for Wild Hope– sorry for the "Wild H
ope" series from PBS– for PBS Nature from HHMI and Tangled Bank Studios. From efforts
to introduce a billion oysters along New York City's shoreline,
to assessing the results of dam removals on the Elwha River in Washington state,
to reporting on cooperative efforts to create a haven for the endangered
red-cockaded woodpecker on an Army artillery range
in North Carolina. The filmmakers told the stories of local changemakers intent on restoring
and protecting biodiversity. "It's easy
to feel hope
less about the damage humans have done to the planet,
but these simple stories offer an engaging,
encouraging glimpse into the work being done by everyday Americans
to protect their local environments," said Judge Angela Saini, a British science
journalist and author. This is Jared Lipworth's
second AAAS Kavli Award. Whitney Beer-Kerr will accept the award
on behalf of the team. Good evening. Thank you so much. My team and I are so honored
to receive this award. "Wild Hope" is a documentary seri
es that spotlights mavericks around the world
who have come up with innovative ways
to combat the biodiversity crisis. And so we're first
so grateful to all of them, to these individuals, these teams for the work that they're doing
and also for allowing us in. If you've ever worked with a film crew,
it's not the easiest thing in the world, especially when you're
trying to save the world. We also want to thank PBS Nature
for distributing our first season, as well as our scientific advisors, Andre
w Balmford and Kira Mileham. Thank you so much again. Appreciate it. The Gold Award for In-Depth Video Reporting goes to Ruth
Berry and Christian Stoppacher for "Star Chasers of Senegal," a NOVA/ GBH production
by Terra Mater Studios in Austria. The PBS film explores the heritage
and future of African astronomy. It's NASA's Lucy spacecraft
that drives the narrative and the dreams of visionary Senegalese astronomer
Maram Kaire. The spacecraft is on a mission to fly
by a series of asteroids to hel
p scientists better understand
the birth of our solar system. The flight team relies on events
called "stellar occultations" to fine tune
the spacecraft's close encounters. In the film, Kaire's team in West Africa
is shown preparing to record a stellar occultation to provide crucial support
for the NASA mission. But Kaire's goals go well beyond that. "I believe space is for everyone," he says. "I have a much more challenging mission
here on Earth, to build a space agency in Senegal. I must prove
to my people
that science can change their lives." Writer/director
Ruth Berry will accept the award. It's an incredible honor to receive this award. Our film is a team effort. I would very much like to thank NOVA, Julia Cort and Chris
Schmidt, and Marc Buie, who was one of the astronomers in the film
who first put me onto this story and introduced me to Maram Kaire. What we want when we make films is impact. And when you say goodbye to your film, when you finish it, you don't know
what's going
to happen to it. What happened to this film was fantastic. Not just this award,
but we made a huge impact in Senegal, in the country
where we made it. And Maram Kaire has his space agency now. He's a wonderful man. Thank you. The Silver Award for the Audio category goes to Wendy
Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Blythe Terrell
and Michelle Dang for the Science Vs podcast "Superbugs: Apocalypse...Now?" We've been hearing for years
about bacteria that can't be killed by some of the strongest
ant
ibiotics, Zukerman notes. But recently it has become apparent
that the superbugs are not only scary. They also have been discovered
in many locations, including hitching a ride
on tiny pieces of plastics in the ocean. In outsmarting antibiotics,
bacteria can readily share their tricks and tiniest genetic mutations
with friendly bacteria. Researchers are scrambling
to keep up, with some success using viruses called phages
that prey on bacteria. Alas, finding the right phage for
a particular super
bug can be challenging. And there are concerns, too, that bacteria
can become resistant to phages. This is the second AAAS
Kavli Award for the Science Vs team. Wendy Zukerman will accept the award. Thank you so much. This means so much,
and the generosity of the AAAS to get me out here.
Australia is a long way away. So, yeah, I appreciate it
so much being here around all of these incredibly inspiring reporters from around
the world is so amazing. It's– I think a lot of us have been working
remot
ely and it's just harder and harder to get that inspiration every day. But being here amongst
you all is so special. I also want to thank the Science
Vs team. Rose is here today, but there's others in New York
and Australia who just work tirelessly and amazingly
and inspire me every day. So thank you. The Gold Award for Audio goes to Adam Rutherford and Ilan
Goodman of the BBC for "Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics,"
a series that traced the development of the eugenics movement
and its repercussi
ons in the modern age. Presenter
Adam Rutherford told the story of eugenics from its origins in the middle class
salons of Victorian Britain through the Fitter Family competitions
and sterilization laws of the Gilded Age in the United States,
to the genocidal horrors of Nazi Germany. While the popularity of eugenics
waned in the wake of World War II, one expert interviewed by the BBC
remarked that although no longer labeled eugenics, eugenic thinking is in every
culture, in every country, at eve
ry time. "Most of the ways that humans vary are not due
to just a few genes," Rutherford notes. To ignore such complexity "invites
the kind of deterministic, categorical
thinking embraced by the eugenicists, seeing the differences between people
as inevitable, fixed, and biological, when in reality
they are complex, malleable, and messy." Producer
Ilan Goodman will accept the award. Ilan? Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So as Hillary mentioned,
I made the series with Adam Rutherford. It wa
s a six part series,
and I think he was partly motivated by wanting to grapple
with the origins of his own discipline. He's a geneticist, and genetics
really grew out of eugenics, quite troublingly. And another thing occurred to me
is that there's a sort of slightly uncomfortable parallel
between the journey I've made from London to be with you here this evening,
and some of the ideas that we– the story that we told in the series,
which was, you know, the term eugenics was coined
and the ideas w
ere were developed in Victorian Britain, and then they came across the Atlantic
and really took hold here in a way that they actually never quite
did in Britain. And so it was actually in the US where the world's first sort of state led program of involuntary
sterilization was established, in Indiana in 1907.
And a number of other states, including most notably California, followed suit. And so a troubling story. And I guess the overriding lesson that I was left with
in working on that series wa
s we started to see how those
ideas keep resurfacing and echoing in different ways
and different movements as is also been attested by some of the other work
being celebrated tonight. So. Sorry
that's a bit of a bummer of a message, but thank you so much. The Silver Award for Children's Science
News goes to freelancer Stephen Ornes for our second winning piece on parasites. Ornes recounts
an early career choice of Chelsea Wood, who wanted to be a marine biologist
but wound up working during coll
ege in a lab
that specialized in parasitic worms. At first,
she thought they were disgusting. "I thought they were gross and slimy,"
she told Ornes. "Why would anyone ever
want to work on them?" She saw, however, that while parasites
could be harmful to an individual organism, they could also be beneficial
to the ecosystems in which they live. She became hooked. "Parasites just wormed their way
into my heart," Wood says. Now an ecologist at the University of Washington,
she specializes in parasi
tes of all sorts. They make up four out of every ten species
on the planet, and she and other specialists in the field
are on a campaign to save them. Stephen Ornes is now a three-time winner and becomes one of 14 AAAS Kavli laureates who have retired
the trophy and are no longer eligible for the award. Stephen? Thank you so much. This is this is such a huge honor
and I think it's clear tonight we need to save the parasites. So starting tomorrow. No, but I'd really like to thank, and very deeply
thank, AAAS
and the Kavli Foundation for supporting science journalism for kids,
who are arguably, perhaps, at least in my opinion,
one of our most important audiences. Because they're going
to be making decisions tomorrow. So thank you so much for that support. And I will say that writing about
parasites was both disgusting and, over time, sort of became irresistible. And it's fun as a writer
to find a narrative that goes against our preconceived
notions. The last thing I'll say
is obviously w
riting is collaborative and I'd love to raise a metaphorical glass
to the whole Science News Explores crew, Janet Raloff, Sarah Zielinski, Mary
Beth Gardiner who edited my story, Jill Sakai – my fantastic editors,
they're really extraordinary and doing something that I think
no one else is doing. So. So I just want to thank them so much. But that's it. Thank you so much. This is our last award. The Gold Award for Children's Science
News goes to freelancer Laura Allen for a story in Science
News
Explores about scientists who are learning how to make cement
and brick construction materials more earth friendly
with a surprising ingredient: poop. In some cases, the feces come from
grazing animals, such as cows, whose manure is full of plant
fibers. Recycling sludge, the material from sewage treatment plants, also works. Both types of poop
have chemical ingredients useful in making cement and bricks. Large amounts of sewage sludge get buried
in landfills every year, Allen reports. But makin
g construction materials with it
instead could put this waste to better use and at the same time reduce
the pollution created by the standard fossil fuel
burning processes used to make cement and bricks. Laura? Thank you so much AAAS
and the Kavli Foundation. I am very honored to be here. It's exciting for me to share this story
with young people. How something as ordinary as poop can be
used in the fight against climate change I'm very grateful to the scientists
who shared their research with m
e: John Zhou, Tuani Zat, and Yask Kulshreshtha. And I also want to give a big
thanks to the team and the editors at Science News Explores, Janet Raloff
and Jill Sakai who edited this story. I wouldn't be here tonight
without all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's have one more round of applause
for all of our winners.
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