Each Thursday afternoon this past month, I’ve attended a lecture on ice-ocean interaction, each led by an expert in the field. The talks, held at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), are part of a course in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and are open to all members of the community, including college interns like myself. The experience of attending these talks is kind of like how I imagine it must feel to stand on a piece of ice in the warming Arctic.

CNN and other mainstream media sources have strongly implied, and sometimes outright stated, Sanders can’t win. The myth that Sanders is unelectable has been popular for the entirety of his campaign, despite its disconnect from reality.

Take a moment to think about the ocean. Not the water at the beach you wade into on hot days, but the deep, far-reaching ocean. Now think about what you’d see if you dove 10,000 feet under. Do you have an idea of what you might find in the depths of the ocean, a picture in your mind that you can attest is fairly accurate? Probably not – and many scientists don’t either.

After the New Hampshire primary, the Republican Party has successfully declared its frontrunners. A loud, obnoxious xenophobe and misogynist in Donald Trump. A quieter, more evangelical, equally obnoxious xenophobe and misogynist in Ted Cruz. Behind them Marco Rubio, the “moderate” and “establishment” Republican who is apparently really upset that Barack Obama is trying to make us more like the rest of the world, because being the nation with the highest amount of wealth inequality and the highest incarceration rate is something to be proud of. There’s also some guy who is, I guess, the governor of Ohio, and whose entire second-place speech in New Hampshire was some weird personal recollection in which he gave no indication of what policies he supports. But for all these candidates, attacks against Planned Parenthood, Mexicans and Muslims have become ways to score points. Two-thirds of voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary wanted to ban Muslims from entering the US – proving, as if we needed any more evidence, that the Republican Party is a national embarrassment.

If you’ve been following science news at all the last two weeks, you’ve seen a slew of articles on the Zika virus, an epidemic that’s rapidly spreading across South and Central America. Zika virus is caused by infection from mosquito bites, and until last year, occurrences were fairly rare. The most recent outbreak of the virus – which was first documented in 1947 – happened in Brazil in early 2015. Until recently, scientists believed it to be fairly harmless, with more than 80 percent of those infected experiencing little to no symptoms. However, recent research has brought to light the possibility of a link between Zika virus and serious birth defects, including microcephaly (being born with an abnormally small head and brain), according to the Mayo Clinic.

I’m not much of a fan of religion in politics. That’s not to say that religious values can’t be a good thing. I went to a Catholic school myself, and although I disagree with many of the things I was taught, there were undoubtedly positive values to be learned.

I wrote my first blog post when I was 14 years old and just beginning to explore my career interests. I was excited to develop my writing skills and to “document my steps into adult life,” as I put it then. After starting, I continued to post for the next year or so. I remember how amazing it felt to know that I could publish information online that anyone could see. Even though I was only in middle school, I had an opportunity to share my thoughts with millions of people – not that I had more than 20 regular readers. Still, it was incredibly exciting. I wasn’t yet familiar with the term “citizen journalism,” but I was already a big fan.

Affirmative action programs have been the topic of harsh debate since their institution in the early 1960s. Different affirmative action programs have been brought to the Supreme Court multiple times, including the recent case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Opinions over affirmative action programs remain largely divided.

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