This summer, you may be thinking of having fun with friends in a swimming pool or relaxing in a spa. However, facing the clear and inviting water of the pool,…
Continue ReadingFormer President Jimmy Carter was diagnosed with stage IV malignant melanoma in 2015, an aggressive form of cancer that spread to his liver and his brain. Until recently, this would…
Continue ReadingIn 2013, cancer affected approximately 14 million people in the United States, and its direct medical costs were almost $75 billion, making cancer a devastating disease from both the human…
Continue ReadingThe taxi driver went quiet, as if lost in thought. I waited, kept patient by that mysterious gut feeling that someone is about to say something. “Tell me, why haven’t…
Continue ReadingThis summer, an afternoon spent flying kites at the beach will be just another day at work for some researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Now…
Continue ReadingWhen was the last time you microwaved food in a plastic container? At some point in my life, I switched many of my plastic food storage containers to glass containers.…
Continue ReadingWhen 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.
Continue ReadingHumans do not find plastic bottles tasty. Try as we might, ingestion and digestion of an Auquafina bottle makes for a bad dinner. On the other hand, some bacteria see…
Continue ReadingDrug use is a fairly common, oftentimes problematic issue among humans. However, Homo sapiens isn’t the only species that likes to experiment with mind-altering substances. In the animal world, many…
Continue ReadingBiologists often encounter mind-bending expansion in complexity the closer they look into the details. Notable examples include the length of DNA strands in each human cell (2-3 meters per cell,…
Continue ReadingWith the season finale of Downton Abbey earlier this month, I know everyone is thinking, “Now, how will I get my fix of period costuming”? If you’re like me, you…
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