On my way to becoming a science writer, I earned a master’s degree in biology. My thesis was a genetics project, and I conducted my experiments among a group of dedicated future geneticists led by an already accomplished — indeed, famous — one. Each week, we would gather for lab meetings, where we gave reports [...]
Global warming has the potential to dramatically expand the oceans’ so-called dead zones, oxygen-poor areas that fish avoid and where less mobile organisms like clams and crabs can’t survive.
Most dead zones are located where rivers empty into the ocean, dumping agricultural fertilizers and other pollutants. A new study by a team of Danish researchers, released yesterday in [...]
School bullies eating your lunch? Science may have found a solution.
A team of researchers from the US and London has been testing a school-wide intervention that focuses on bystanders — including teachers — as much as the bullies or victims. And the method is showing early promise. The study was released this evening by the Journal of [...]
“Researchers Try to Cure Racism” caught my attention after it was released by Wired Science and generated controversy on the Digg network, within days of President Obama’s inauguration. Brown University’s Michael Tarr led the study, which invited participants to view pictures of similar-looking black faces and record their immediate, spoken responses. The responses were characterized [...]
I enjoy writing about astronomy exactly for the reason I once feared it: there’s so much we don’t know. There’s rarely any shame in asking about the nature of a black hole, for example, because scientists are grappling with it too. Usually, if I get confused while writing an astronomy story, it’s because I’ve stumbled [...]
