Did you hear the news? If you've got romaine lettuce on hand in the United States, and you don't know where it came from (such as a local farm), you are being urged by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to throw it out. A batch of romaine lettuce from Yuma, Arizona has been contaminated … Continue reading The under-appreciated lives of plants
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From canals to carp–a book about the Great Lakes
I wanted to share a quick post about a book I finished reading this week, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. In 2017, Milwaukee journalist Dan Egan wrote a compelling "un-natural history" of the Great Lakes, chronicling the shifting relationship modern human society has built with these giant inland seas. Balancing stories of … Continue reading From canals to carp–a book about the Great Lakes
More tales of domesticity and aggression
Last summer, I read the book How to Tame a Fox, by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. I found the scientific story of fox genetics and domestication in the Soviet Union/Russia to be a compelling mix of biography, science, and politics. In June 2017, I wrote a blog post about the book and other … Continue reading More tales of domesticity and aggression
An animated view of life
It can be very difficult to visualize the inner structures of living things since we can't see them directly. Our own bodies hide mysteries that usually are revealed only to surgeons or with imaging techniques such as X-rays. But the tiniest components of life: the structures of cells, viruses, and molecules—such as DNA and proteins—can … Continue reading An animated view of life
Scientists in our neighborhoods
As a young child, my first lessons in "community" came from errands and outings with my family, interactions with neighbors, school and extra-curricular activities I participated in...and public television. I grew up with now-classic episodes of "Sesame Street" and "Mister Roger's Neighborhood," which taught me about the basics of positive communities and the people who … Continue reading Scientists in our neighborhoods
Science from the sidelines: Lessons from jellyfish
What does it mean to be a scientist? When children are young, we teach them about the types of people they will encounter in the big world and their own options for their future adult roles. We tell them that scientists are people who ask questions about how the world works and try to find … Continue reading Science from the sidelines: Lessons from jellyfish
Sparrows in the news (yes, really)
Sparrows in the news? The little brown birds that visit my yard, that I never can confidently conclude are sparrows and not perhaps wrens? Yep. These unassuming neighbors have been featured in a few science headlines over the past couple of weeks, which I thought was curious. So I thought I'd pop in this week … Continue reading Sparrows in the news (yes, really)
Discovering Dr. Sacks in his final essays
I'm late to discovering the writing of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist who practiced medicine in New York City until his death in 2015. In fact, I became aware of his career only shortly before his death, when an autobiographical essay about his own cancer and mortality was published in The New York Times. … Continue reading Discovering Dr. Sacks in his final essays
Earth, Mars, and working in the space in between
As a child, one of my favorite picture books at my Grandma's house to read and reread was about astronauts. I was born after the moon launch, but the lure of "the space age" continued to populate children's literature, and I marveled at the curiosities of space travel, the preparations and lives of astronauts, and … Continue reading Earth, Mars, and working in the space in between
“The Radium Girls” and the lasting legacy of Marie Curie
I have a healthy respect for radiation. As a fledgling student in genetics in the 1990s, I learned how to use radioactive phosphorus (32P) safely to tag fragments of DNA molecules. When you expose materials containing radioactive DNA to X-ray film, the emitted particles from the phosphorus atoms create dark splotches on the film that … Continue reading “The Radium Girls” and the lasting legacy of Marie Curie