Water scarcity is one of the greatest challenges of our time, according to the United Nations. For the Dolan family of Philadelphia, water runs deep and personal. Almost 90 years ago, Philadelphia-area naturalist/adventurist, Brooke Dolan II, led expeditions to western China and Tibet and collected the Asian mammals on exhibit in the dioramas of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. He and his colleagues also brought back thousands of other specimens to study at a time when the world looked to natural history museums for information on countless little-known species.

The fires now ravaging North California have been particularly bad this year because years of drought have left the area much like a tinderbox. One way to combat this build-up of “fuel load” is a controlled burn.

Amanda Lough, PhD, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a geologist who focuses on seismology, the study of earthquakes. She explains that although there are some rare cases where one earthquake might lead to another, that is almost certainly not the case in Mexico.

Since Friday, Houston and its surrounding area has been hammered by more than 40 inches of rain, with more set to come. Flooding related to Hurricane Harvey has water cresting dams and forcing people to their rooftops all across the area.

Hiding inside a hard shell that’s up to four feet long and resembles an elephant tusk, there’s a dark-colored earthworm-like creature. At one end, the creature’s body forms a slight bulb. At the other, claw-like appendages. It doesn’t really eat on its own, but ingests products made by bacteria that live within it.

Graduate and undergraduate students in Drexel's Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science (BEES) received an impressive number of awards, scholarships, grants and fellowships for 2017-18. Their academic prowess also earned the department the record for the highest number of honorees for major scholarships/fellowships out of any department in the University!