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New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lapham's Quarterly Will Begin Its Revival with Website and Podcast
The literary journal Lapham's Quarterly is relaunching its website and podcast this summer under the editorial guidance of the writers Donovan Hohn and Francine Prose — a fortuitous and surprising turn for a magazine that seemed on the brink of extinction. Starting this week, Lapham's will revive its weekly podcast, 'The World in Time.' In coming days, new online features and editorial commentary will be published on its website, including installments of the quarterly's centerpiece section, 'Voices in Time,' which showcases provocative writing from historical figures, philosophers and thinkers. The first podcast episode, due out this Friday, will be hosted by Hohn, and will include audio clips from a keynote address that the journal's founder, Lewis Lapham, gave in 2011 at Bard College, a prescient speech about the urgent need for truth telling. Another episode airing on Saturday is devoted to memorializing Lapham, who died last summer at the age of 89. It will feature recorded audio from his memorial service, where notable authors and artists spoke, among them Alec Baldwin, Christopher Lloyd, Oskar Eustis and Ben Metcalf. Next year, editors hope to restart production of print issues. Elaborately designed, they revolved around a single broad theme, like youth, war, money or happiness, and featured long-form articles, essays and excerpts from historical texts. (Famous bylines included Thucydides, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Sun Tzu.) In a media landscape where most publications are relentlessly chasing breaking news and online trends, Lapham's seemed almost defiantly averse to following the news cycle. When Lapham founded the publication in 2007, his goal was 'to bring the voices of the past up to the microphone of the present,' he later told The New York Times. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bard College at Simons Rock to lay off 116 employees
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. (WWLP) – More than 100 employees will be laid off at a college campus in Berkshire County later this year. The looming shutdown of Bard College at Simon's Rock and Bard Academy at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington will cost 116 jobs. The layoffs will be effective June 30th but some will stay on until December 31st. The college and academy announced their planned shutdowns in November. Both will move to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Local News Headlines WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WWLP.
National Post
06-05-2025
- Business
- National Post
Standard Reporting Underestimates the Value of Office Furniture Reuse
Article content Installnet, Bard College MBA program analysis finds avoided greenhouse gas emissions are nine times more than estimates Article content Article content BOWIE, Md. — New research released today finds that diverting three of the most reused office items from landfill – task, desk and stack chairs – avoids far more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than methodologies currently used by the industry. The research, by furniture solutions company Installnet and Bard College's MBA program, ' Standard Reporting Omits Most Benefits of Reusing Office Furniture – This Must Change,' was developed as part of a new collective's effort to develop and implement real world solutions to reduce waste. Article content To determine how accurate existing tools are at estimating the environmental impact of furniture diversion from landfill, researchers compared them with actual measures developed through Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The research finds that the current industry standard for measuring the impact of these efforts relies on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Waste Reduction Model (WARM), which significantly underestimates the greenhouse gas emissions avoided through reuse, resale, repurpose, and recycling. Article content 'We have seen firsthand the value of these efforts on the environment and the community, but this analysis reveals, for the first time, that we're actually avoiding nine times more GHG emissions than the WARM estimates show,' said Installnet CEO Dale Ewing. 'This is huge. It's time for the industry to embrace sustainable decommissioning and move toward a more accurate understanding of the actual impact that things like take-back, donation and resale programs.' Article content The Installnet Ecoserv program has diverted more than 55 million pounds of waste from landfill since 2012 through reuse, resale, relocation and recycling, including donations to groups in more than 3,200 communities across North America. The donations help local nonprofits, schools, first responders and other organizations devote more resources to their missions and reduce the GHG emissions that worsen climate change. Each year, more than 146 million tons of solid waste goes to landfills in the U.S., generating dangerous methane gas emissions that worsen climate change. An estimated 12 million tons of that waste is furniture. Article content The research was done by Deanna Diaz, a recent graduate of the Bard College MBA program in sustainability, and John Friedman, a leader in corporate sustainability initiatives. Article content 'Only a few manufacturers share cradle-to grave LCAs and only for a select group of newer products,' Diaz said. 'And the information is very difficult to find. Transparency of a product's environmental impact remains an exception rather than the norm.' Article content Developing LCAs is time consuming and costly for manufacturers, Friedman explained. Article content 'Starting with the items most likely to be reused will help the industry demonstrate the actual impact of sustainable decommissions,' Friedman said. 'And because LCAs are independently verified, this will help meet new reporting standards and requirements.' Article content The research is part of a collective founded by Installnet, called Ecoserv Net Zero (ENZO). The collective is sharing lessons learned and best practices in sustainable decommissions to create industry standards. It is also documenting processes, procedures and practices to become assurance ready and meet new reporting requirements. Article content Installnet is a recognized leader in sustainability. Its rapidly growing Ecoserv program keeps unused furniture and other assets in circulation, instead of sending them to landfill. Article content Installnet provides professional project management services in the United States and Canada. Our network of over 350 highly qualified independent furniture installation companies provide exceptional service in more than 100 major markets. Our custom solutions range from Ecoserv, an award-winning sustainable decommission program to Installhub, a self-serve platform of installation companies. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Article content Article content
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Is there really alien life on this exoplanet? We asked 10 experts.
In 2020, scientists claimed to have found a sign of life on Venus: hints of a stinky gas called phosphine that's made by microbes on Earth. The claim was swiftly challenged and, years later, is still mired in controversy. Now, another stinky gas has sparked its own alien life debate—this time, for an exoplanet. Researchers announced on April 16 that they'd used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to detect a gas called dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b, which orbits in its alien star's habitable zone. On Earth, DMS is mostly made by microscopic phytoplankton. On other planets, it could be what's called a biosignature—a sign of life. Cambridge University, which hosts several of the researchers involved in the detection, was quick to promote the finding as the 'strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system.' Some media outlets trumpeted the DMS as a likely sign of life. But scientists who weren't involved in the discovery aren't as euphoric. 'I'm pretty skeptical of this claim, and I wish the press coverage better reflected the skepticism of the astronomical and astrobiological community,' wrote astrobiologist Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of Washington in an email. For Clara Sousa-Silva, an astrochemist at Bard College who was involved in the 2020 Venus biosignature debacle, the situation is disappointingly familiar. 'We did not learn enough from the 'phosphine on Venus' drama,' she says. National Geographic got in touch with ten independent experts to find out what to make of this biosignature claim. (Not all are quoted below, but their views are represented.) The takeaway: It's an exciting discovery, perhaps even an important step on the way to discovering alien life one day. Emphasis on 'one day.' We did not just find aliens. Here's what you need to know about DMS on K2-18b. If you follow exoplanet news, you might be feeling a bit of déjà vu. In 2023, the same research team led by Cambridge astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan published JWST observations hinting at DMS on K2-18b. Based on the same JWST data, the researchers also concluded that K2-18b was a type of habitable planet called a 'Hycean' world. Madhusudhan and his colleagues coined the term in 2021 to describe a group of hypothetical planets bigger than Earth, smaller than Neptune, mostly made of water, and wreathed in thick veils of hydrogen and helium. Under the right conditions, they could have temperate surface oceans hospitable for life. The DMS detection from 2023 fell short of the typical statistical standards for discoveries in astronomy. This new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is a follow-up using an instrument on JWST that's sensitive to light at different wavelengths than the original study. While the last DMS detection was weaker than tentative, this one appears to be much stronger. Madhusudhan and his colleagues claim that their detection of DMS (and/or a similar molecule called dimethyl disulfide or DMDS) reaches a 'three sigma' level of significance. That's statistical jargon meaning there's less than a 0.3 percent chance that the DMS detection was made by chance—still lower than the gold standard five sigma cutoff for statistical significance, but far more convincing than before. 'Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have,' Madhusudhan said in Cambridge's press release. Other scientists aren't as sanguine. Some are skeptical that the DMS (or DMDS) is even there at all. 'It's really interesting, a great showcase of the capabilities of JWST,' astronomer Laura Kreidberg of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said in a voice memo. 'But, yeah, I wouldn't bet my house on it.' Scientists can use JWST to identify gases in exoplanet atmospheres via chemical fingerprints in starlight that has filtered through the planets' atmospheres. Those chemical fingerprints show up as wiggles in graphs of the starlight's intensity versus its wavelength. The new study tried to match these spectral wiggles to 20 molecules. That's 'more molecules than astronomers often do, it's just astronomers don't often claim aliens,' says Sousa-Silva. Most of those molecules aren't structurally similar to DMS and DMDS, either, she notes, so it wasn't exactly a targeted screen of possible false-positives. Another researcher, astronomer Ryan MacDonald at the University of Michigan went further, criticizing the three sigma claim as 'statistical hacking' on Bluesky. Kreidberg is more forgiving. 'I think that the discovery team did a great job, really careful work with the data. But as someone in this business myself, I can say that it is just really hard.' Already, researchers have formally challenged the biosignature claim. In a preliminary study posted to on April 22, astrophysicist Jake Taylor of the University of Oxford found no strong evidence for DMS and/or DMDS in the new JWST data. Though K2-18b orbits in its star's habitable zone, it is not a second Earth. At 2.6 times the radius and 8.6 times the mass of our planet, it is a mysterious and alien world—one that might not even be habitable. When an independent team recently reanalyzed the Cambridge team's 2023 observations of K2-18b, they found no evidence of DMS, nor of carbon dioxide—a blow to the Hycean world scenario, which predicted plenty of carbon dioxide. An earlier study claimed that K2-18b is most likely an inhospitable gassy ball with no surface whatsoever. Another team has suggested an even less hospitable alternative: The planet could have an ocean not of water, but of magma. Madhusudhan points out that the analysis reporting no carbon dioxide on K2-18b has not yet been peer-reviewed. 'There are open questions, but they don't preclude habitability,' he says. 'The evidence for CO2 is certainly there.' Even if K2-18b is a Hycean world, that doesn't mean it is habitable. Without a reflective deck of clouds, the planet's ocean would broil beneath its hydrogen blanket. That's the likely fate of any ocean that might exist on K2-18b, at least according to a study posted last week. 'The simplest explanation of this planet is a very thick gas-giant atmosphere with no habitable surface,' says exoplanet scientist Nick Wogan of NASA Ames. 'There are so many challenges with making a habitable (or inhabited) K2-18b work.' Still, let's say scientists confirm the DMS signal, and K2-18b turns out to be a habitable Hycean world. You still might want to hold off on popping the 'we found aliens' champagne. Until scientists can rule out abiotic explanations—ones that don't involve living things—for DMS and/or DMDS, these gases won't be true biosignatures for K2-18b. And as Harrison Smith, an astrobiologist at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Japan, and his colleague Cole Mathis at Arizona State University argued in a 2023 essay, ruling out false positives for exoplanets is very hard. 'At least Venus is a planet we know. We know what it looks like, and what the environment is like,' says Sousa-Silva. Without knowing what K2-18b's geochemistry and atmosphere are really like, scientists can't confidently exclude the possibility that alien chemistry, not alien life, is the source of the DMS. And we already know that nature can produce DMS without life. Last year, chemist Nora Hänni at the University of Bern and her colleagues found DMS on comet 67P—not exactly a habitable world. Other researchers have found it in interstellar space. And last year, chemist Eleanor Browne of the University of Colorado, Boulder and her colleagues showed that DMS can be produced in light-fueled chemical reactions in lab experiments with synthetic atmospheres. 'There's no reason to understand [DMS] as a unique consequence of life,' says Mathis. 'I just, for the life of me, cannot figure out exactly what the argument is about: why they think this could even potentially be indicative of life, given that we've seen abiotic sources.' The study authors acknowledge some of these challenges. Madhusudhan says that neither comets nor interstellar material are feasible sources of the high concentrations of DMS and DMDS his team detected. But finding DMS in unexpected, dead environments shows that we still have a lot to learn about how it forms. Other uncertainties haunt the detection. We don't know how life began on Earth, so we can't know if conditions on K2-18b — even if they'd be hospitable for earthlings — could have got life started in the first place. And even if life did evolve there, who's to say that it'd produce DMS — and if it does produce DMS, why haven't scientists spotted other biosignature gases? Still, despite its many, many caveats, most researchers we spoke with agree that there's reason to celebrate this new study of K2-18b. 'It's really an achievement. Thirty years ago, we didn't even know that there are exoplanets,' says Hänni. Peter Vickers, a philosopher of science at Durham University who's studied life detection claims, was initially skeptical. 'But then the more I looked at it, the more I thought that it actually is quite significant and shouldn't be underplayed either,' he says. For Madhusudhan's part, he doesn't think caution and excitement are mutually exclusive. Even a sliver of evidence for alien life is a 'transformational achievement' he says, but there's a big step from there to a true life detection claim. 'We need to recognize both: the achievement and the caution.' If we do ever find life beyond our solar system, it won't happen all at once. We'll slide slowly into certainty, pushed along by findings like this one—hints that there's something more to discover if only we'd look closer. And this result is, without a doubt, an invitation to look closer at K2-18b. If we find life there, on one of the first potentially habitable planets we've inspected closely, says Vickers, we'll have to assume life is common everywhere; if life is rare, the odds of just stumbling upon the right planet are astronomically low. 'We're still only at the question asking stage, but it's amazing that we can ask this question,' says astrobiologist Michael Wong of Carnegie Science. 'What a lucky time to be alive.' Editor's note: This story was updated on April 19, 2025, to clarify the timing of efforts to reanalyze the Cambridge team's 2023 observations and model the composition of K2-18b. It was updated again on May 1, 2025, to include the first reanalysis of the new JWST data.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lapham's Quarterly Reaches Deal to Live On
When Lewis Lapham died last year, it appeared that his magazine might go with him. Lapham's Quarterly, a beloved journal of history and reportage he started, had stopped putting out issues. The fate of the publication was uncertain without Mr. Lapham, a nattily dressed former editor at Harper's who seemed to personify a bygone era of magazines. But Mr. Lapham's magazine will live on, though under a much different owner. Bard College, a private liberal arts institution in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is acquiring it at no cost from the American Agora Foundation, the nonprofit that had published the magazine. 'This will benefit all our students,' said Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College. 'To understand how it's possible to talk intelligently, without jargon, without the worst of self-referential academic prose, about important ideas and important controversies and complexities, which we seem not to tolerate today.' Lapham's Quarterly, which was founded in 2007, is something of an oddity, even for the quirky magazine business. Each issue connects a broad, sweeping theme — 'Night,' for example, or 'Happiness' — to current events thorough long-form articles and excerpts from historical texts by writers like Shakespeare. Mr. Lapham had already written the preamble to the latest issue, focused on energy, when he died in July at age 89. Bard College plans to publish that issue in print and has others in development, with the titles 'Islands' and 'Folly.' It's still unclear whether Bard will continue Lapham's Quarterly on its regular print schedule after that. The magazine will be operated by the Hannah Arendt Center, a politics and humanities institution founded by the scholar Roger Berkowitz. One of the most valuable assets owned by the foundation, the list of 17,500 paying subscribers to Lapham's Quarterly, will also pass to Bard, said Paul Morris, the magazine's publisher and executive editor. It is unclear whether any of the 18 or so staff members furloughed when the magazine went on hiatus last year will be hired back. The American Agora Foundation will dissolve. Before he died, Mr. Lapham blessed the transaction with Bard on a call with Mr. Morris. But it took months for Bard to vet copyright issues, said Mr. Morris, who added that his only regret was that Mr. Lapham wasn't around to see the magazine pass into safe hands. 'It's my great lament that he couldn't be here for this conversation,' Mr. Morris said, 'because I know he'd be echoing everything that's been said and adding his own flavor to it.'
