When you work in an academic lab and are fully engaged in your research, it’s easy to overlook all of the people that provide support for your experiments and keep…
Continue ReadingFor a few weeks every spring, Chapel Hill and Carrboro are covered in a yellow blanket of pine tree pollen and everything’s a mess. Birches, oaks, pines, and more get…
Continue ReadingAs a scientist watched jellyfish float in Friday Harbor, Washington, he wondered what caused them to fluoresce green. It took years of determination to unravel the mystery…
Continue ReadingTo me, it seems that the media hypes all new disease outbreaks as the advent of the apocalypse. More often, the facts about these epidemics are simply overstated or misrepresented.…
Continue ReadingKristen Stewart. Her Majesty the Queen. The cartoon character Daria. Yours truly. What do we all have in common?
Continue ReadingAs noted climate scientist Michael Mann observes, to do climate science is to enter the “climate wars.” War is an apt descriptor for this sociopolitical milieu, in which veracious research…
Continue ReadingAs a huge Minnesota Twins fan, I was sad to hear that former catcher and current first baseman Joe Mauer is still reporting concussion-related vision problems. These symptoms stem from…
Continue ReadingFrom graduate students to faculty members, scientific researchers generally receive training in writing technical documents. Usually these documents are intended to communicate findings to other scientists.
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