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Professor of Physics Paul Cadden-Zimansky hosted a video tour of the Global Physics Summit, a “public celebration of all things quantum,” in partnership with the American Physical Society. The video tour was part of Cadden-Zimanski’s responsibility as Global Coordinator for the UN’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, a position he was appointed to in January. Participants at the Summit showed experiments related to Quantum science like static electricity and UV light. “The idea of this year is to have everybody who knows something about Quantum help people who don’t learn a little more about it,” Cadden-Zimansky said.

At the Summit, Cadden-Zimansky spoke with scientists from around the world about the importance of Quantum mechanics at 100. He also spoke with Nobel Laureate Barry Barish, an expert on gravitational waves, about why scientists should engage in public outreach about scientific topics. “As individuals, you or I can only do so much,” Barish said. “But one thing that actually multiplies what we do… is to get young kids interested in science. I think it makes it worthwhile.”

A new study led by Gidon Eshel, research professor of environmental and urban studies at Bard College, which found that grass-fed beef did not hold a carbon emissions benefit compared to grain-fed, was featured in the Washington Post. Some ranchers and conservationists have posited that grass-fed beef is better for the planet than grain-fed cows—which have been shown to produce lower methane emissions because they grow faster and are slaughtered younger—by arguing that grazing fields store carbon underground instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. However the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used newly available US data comparing pasture where cows were grazing to grass that had been left undisturbed and factored the carbon storage in the soil into the overall carbon footprint of grass-fed beef, and compared this to the emissions from grain-fed systems. It showed that the emissions per kilogram of protein of even the most efficient grass-fed beef operations were 10–25% higher than those of grain-fed beef. “Accounting for soil sequestration lowers the emissions, and makes grass-fed beef more similar to industrial beef, but it does not under any circumstances make this beef desirable in terms of carbon balance,” Eshel told the Post. “That argument does not hold.”

Clara Sousa-Silva, assistant professor of physics at Bard College, was interviewed in Jacobin about how crucial scientific data required for her research had vanished from federal government servers. Sousa-Silva’s research studying the atmospheres of other planets relies on climate monitoring data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “This data disappearance coincides with the aggressive implementation of two intertwined initiatives from the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump’s campaign to purge the federal government of anything ‘woke,’ including efforts to combat climate change,” writes Meagan Day for Jacobin. “The consequences for my research on Venus are pretty bad,” said Sousa-Silva. “I will be a worse astrophysicist. But that feels pretty minor considering the importance of being able to monitor how our climate is changing. To climate science, this is absolutely disastrous.”