Tiritiri Matangi Lighthouse | Wikimedia Commons Ray Walter arrived on New Zealand’s Tiritiri Matangi Island as a lighthouse keeper in 1980, when the job was already approaching its end. The country was automating its lighthouses, and in 1984 Walter’s position disappeared when the Tiritiri Matangi light was automated. He did not leave the island. Instead,…

Small Indian Mongoose Oʻahu, Hawai. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons​ SSugarcane fields once dominated Puerto Rico’s economy and rats were a major pest in those fields, leading plantation owners to introduce the small Indian mongoose as a biological control measure. In the 1870s, plantation owners across the Caribbean imported the small Indian mongoose (Herpestes javanicus) from…

Connor Hill (Delta High School, State College, PA) By writing a custom computer algorithm that mapped every possible version of a rare class of geometric shapes, 17-year-old Connor Hill from Port Matilda, Pennsylvania, has won the top $250,000 prize at the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search.His computational proof classified a complex group of three-dimensional shapes…

Hawaii introduced mosquitofish to control mosquitoes Introduced to Hawaii in 1905 to control disease-carrying mosquitoes, the eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) has caused major declines in native aquatic insects, including several threatened species of Hawaiian damselflies. Conservation reports from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) show that the small, non-native fish has had a…

Akshay Kumar with his son Aarav. (Instagram/akshaykumar) For parents, it can be difficult to watch their children start small. We often want them to get the best job, earn a good salary and choose a career that looks successful from the beginning. But sometimes, children need the freedom to explore, make their own choices and…