As 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 ReadingAs many young academics very well know, science can bum you out. Experiments fail, equipment breaks, and funding opportunities are few and far between. Even when experiments run smoothly, the…
Continue ReadingImagine a pathogen that makes its host more sexually active. It may not kill its host right away. It may not kill its host at all. It is easy to…
Continue ReadingIf you opt for a Guinness this St. Patrick’s Day, keep an eye on your pint as it settles (which, according to official Guinness standards should happen for exactly 119.5 seconds…
Continue ReadingI first heard of the band OK Go when they released their music video for ‘Here It Goes Again,’ which features the band members cruising back and forth over treadmills.…
Continue ReadingAuthor’s forward There are days in which a scientist finds herself needing to express her “mean genes.” When an experimental control fails, when Reviewer 3 sinks a paper, when someone…
Continue ReadingThe giant whiteboard outside our lab has a simple to do list: Plan the experiments to answer all the questions Be better This list is a joke, of course, but…
Continue ReadingFollowing the Super Bowl, millions of football fans suddenly exhibit mood swings and odd behaviors. Symptoms include flipping aimlessly through TV channels on Sunday afternoons or a sudden obsession with…
Continue Reading“Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare” –…
Continue ReadingScientists thrive on “aha” moments— breakthroughs in knowledge that come from careful planning or perhaps fortuitous luck. For a team of researchers led by Josh Lawrimore, a fourth-year graduate student…
Continue ReadingStatistics. Ugh. Why force-feed such a dreary topic to countless innocent students across the globe? Well, statistics is actually an outrageously important field of study. People make graphs to summarize…
Continue ReadingValentine’s Day is today and it’s incredibly common to see public places decorated with paper hearts and store shelves packed with heart-shaped candy. Hearts are a universal representation of love, but…
Continue ReadingAs an avid New York sports fan, I love a good Tom Brady controversy. Many of these controversies are ridiculous and take up too much time during actual news broadcasts…
Continue ReadingWho hasn’t heard that dog is man’s best friend? One of my best buddies is my dog Frisco, who is shown in this picture. What you can see are our…
Continue ReadingOn December 12, 2015, a conference hall in Paris erupted with applause. In the middle of an unusually warm December, world leaders hashed out a climate deal some twenty years…
Continue ReadingIf you’re like most graduate students, you’ve probably thought to yourself at one time or another, “I really hope I’m doing this whole grad school thing right.” Let it be…
Continue ReadingHumans need to explore. Not because it is in our DNA – the gene for exploration hasn’t been discovered yet – but because it is essential to our survival and…
Continue ReadingThe coming of the New Year often brings about feelings of nostalgia as we reminisce about the previous calendar year. Looking back at 2015, we as humans have quite a…
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