The image before you is known as Darwin’s tree of life. Today, most scientists immediately recognize it as a basic idea in evolutionary theory; yet when Darwin drew it in…
Continue ReadingNo one can accuse the opah, Lampris guttatus, of being a cold fish. Nor could one call it a cold-hearted fish. Even if it were the most emotionally distant and…
Continue ReadingSpeaker: Mark Derewicz, Science Communications Manager at UNC School of Medicine/UNC Health Care Date: May 26th, 2015 Time: 5:30 PM Location: Bondurant Hall, Room G030 Event Link: https://swac.web.unc.edu/event/mark-derewicz-seminar/ Last month,…
Continue ReadingNon-scientist friends and relatives often ask me whether I am “curing” cancer, and question why the cure for cancer doesn’t already exist following decades of funding for research. Worse, some…
Continue ReadingContrary to scientific consensus, the public at large continues to harbor concerns over the consumption of foods containing Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs. To make matters worse, scientists have now…
Continue ReadingRecently featured in Science, Valentino Gantz and Ethan Bier have developed a novel genome editing method that subverts traditional heritability. Termed the mutagenic chain reaction, this process can insert new…
Continue ReadingIn 2012, I was working at the Cooperative Oxford Lab in Oxford, Maryland, when we were notified of and rescued a stranded sea turtle. Sadly, the turtle was so sick…
Continue ReadingFar out in eastern Russia, deep in the Siberian Plateau, lies one of the great waterways of the world. The Lena is the eleventh longest river on Earth. For thousands…
Continue ReadingMost people would presume the safest place to survive the imminent Zombie apocalypse would be in an underground bunker. This erroneous conclusion has led to the untimely death of a…
Continue ReadingFor weeks, I struggled to produce a successful harvest of lentivirus. I needed to transduce my pancreatic cancer cell lines with shRNA targeting my gene of interest. This is a…
Continue ReadingSWAC’s First Monthly Seminar: Lauren Neighbours, PhD, RAC Wednesday, April 29th at 5:30 PM Bondurant Hall, Rm. G074 In my fourth year of graduate school, I decided…
Continue ReadingOn behalf of our founding members, I would like to welcome you to the blog site for the UNC-Chapel Hill Science Writing and Communication (SWAC) Club. The SWAC Club has…
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