It’s Nobel Prize season again, and the science behind this particular award for Medicine feels like a familiar friend. I got my crash course in telomeres and telomerase from a group meeting talk that one of my lab colleagues gave almost exactly a decade ago. The science recognized was done a quarter century ago. DNA…
NOVA scienceNow has a cool new web feature– “The Secret Life of Scientists”— that I explored today (thanks to Facebook and Symmetry Mag). It’s clear that this series is right up my alley– I probe my past experience and talk to scientists, in part, about what makes them tick. I’m constantly coming back to the…
Followers of this blog might have noticed that the Molecule of the Week (MotW) feature took a summerish hiatus. I’ve decided to expand the feature to include interesting materials, which are often more complex mixtures, either of synthetic or naturally-made compounds. So, I’m adding Material of the Week (MatotW in blogospheric shorthand) to help round…
How did I get so lucky? Seriously. A little while ago, I came across this post in Nature News’s blog about the new kids’ album from They Might Be Giants. And. The. Videos. My neighbors probably heard me scream with glee, and then I made an impulse buy on iTunes–which I rarely do. Honest. Wow,…
“So do you consider yourself a scientist or a writer?” An undergraduate student asked me that question last fall when I guest-lectured about communicating research for a social-scientist friend’s seminar course. I immediately said, “A writer, but I write about science.” But I do understand why he was confused. Even having done it, I wouldn’t…
I love big, beautiful Hubble pictures, and these most recent ones are no exception. When I was working on the new astronomy exhibits at Griffith Observatory a few years ago, I marveled that I got paid to dig up spectacular images like this one. In a time where basic science rarely makes the local evening…
On a spring afternoon walk earlier this year, I obsessively took pictures of New York harbor garbage. A buildup of plastic bottles, crates, driftwood and furniture fragments littered the rocks along our coastal walkway– a strange jumble of junk. But my local trash doesn’t come close to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch– our global oceanic trash…
Creating a genetic program to crinkle DNA into the perfect shape can appear to be a scientific stunt. But DNA origami is more than a molecular magic trick. In this excerpt from a 2007 TED lecture, Paul Rothemund describes the science behind the work– how a chain– based on its sequence– becomes a two-dimensional shape.…
So, today I’m revealing some the depths of my true chemistry geekiness. As I was poring over press releases, I found one from the University of Michigan that was fun– but probably also too geeky– to propose as a story idea: a microfluidic device that moves droplets based on sound waves. First of all, some…
Summer’s distracted me from blogging, but I just returned from the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, DC. That meeting is a huge mishmash for me– a combination of catching up with former chemistry colleagues, meeting up with current writing colleagues, and getting myself back up to speed on what’s new with molecules. Though it’s…