Dani Leviss

Clad in multiple layers of sweatshirts, three commercial crabbers brace against the choppy waters and brisk winds of New Jersey’s Great Bay. Watching a sonar screen mounted near the boat’s steering wheel, Warren and Karen Unkert, the two lead crabbers, navigate toward black circles marking the location of their targets like Xs on a treasure map. They’re training the third crabber, another local fisher, to operate the sonar. Suddenly, the daisy chain of grappling hooks trailing behind them...

How one religious leader finds environmental roots in Islamic tradition. When the light streams through the four large windows of NIA Masjid & Community Center, it casts an intricate pattern onto the prayer room floor. These exquisite windows, whose designs pay tribute to Spanish influence, are one of the mosque’s “green” features. They let light inside and reduce the need for artificial lighting. Just outside this haven, though, is the heavily polluted city of Newark, New Jersey.
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Saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, woolly rhinos and other ice age megafauna are all extinct now — but who or what is to blame remains a mystery. Was it overkill, overchill or overgrill?

Warming temperatures are a breeding ground for vulnerabilities in water distribution systems. A new study tackles challenges with maintaining and engineering water systems for a hotter future.

Over time, it’s natural for zookeepers to become very familiar with their animals. At the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Conn., zookeepers have noticed plenty of odd or interesting behaviors, particularly with their mammals. Pana the Giant Anteater, for instance, gets very nervous at certain loud noises. The Goeldi’s Monkey sticks his tongue out at one particular male zookeeper.

For hundreds of years, people have looked into the night sky and wondered if anyone’s looking back. But answering the question “Are we alone?” isn’t easy.
It unleashes more questions: How many other planets could support life? If there is other life somewhere out there, is it intelligent? Is it near enough to us that we could ever make contact?

What if you could be in two places at once — and one of them was Mars? With avatar robots, you could feel like you’re out of this world without ever leaving the comfort of Earth. A new competition’s sponsors are betting $10 million that engineers can get closer than ever to making science fiction a reality in the next few years.

Cheerleader, critic, both, or neither. What is the role of the journalist, and more specifically, the science writer? This was the crux of the opening plenary debate at ScienceWriters 2018.

Hosted by Dani Leviss, The Leviss Lab is a 5-minute radio program spinning a science take on everyday topics like roller coasters, sunscreen, and money. Produced by Dani Leviss and Prof. Louis Dell'Omo at Middlesex County College's Blue Colt Radio.

Take a second and imagine you’re at the beach — warm sand between your toes, clear blue water lapping along the shore, sun warming your back, kites flying high, seashells, sand castles, salty air, surfing, swimming. What makes the ocean so universally calming? Why are people drawn to the sand and sea in the first place?

They make you scream, laugh, and maybe even wet your pants. If you don’t immediately toss your cookies after deboarding, then you run back on line to ride again. Have you ever wondered how roller coasters actually work? Or why people love these awe-inspiring, nausea-inducing behemoths of steel and wood?

It’s the white lotion mom or dad rubbed all over your face, arms, and legs before hitting the beach or sending you off to camp. But what does it actually do besides leaving you with that indescribable scent of summer? And what do the different SPF numbers mean, if anything at all?

In the early morning hours before the People’s Climate March on April 29, a thunderous bang started the day, which only got louder.

A PBS documentary offers an in-depth look at the life and work of “Silent Spring“ author Rachel Carson.

In the aftermath of hurricanes, salinity intrusion events cause tree damage and death in coastal forests and wetlands, but are overshadowed by wind and flooding impacts. After Hurricane Sandy's ravaging winds and crashing waves subsided in 2012, another danger lay hidden in the soils of forests and wetlands along the eastern coast of the United States.