Reviews
Just Keeping Swimming
When a senior male scientist claimed the data from sawfish she’d tagged, Jasmin Graham –an early career shark researcher in Florida– felt powerless. It was not one individual’s behavior but the failure of the larger scientific community to take appropriate action was frustrating. Dejected, Graham...
Read MoreThe Biology of Kindness
We tend to think about kindness as a quality that helps others, not ourselves. But a new book, The Biology of Kindness: Six daily choices for health, well-being, and longevity, unpicks the impact of being kind on our bodies and lifespan, as well as the...
Read MoreThe Future of Language
After linguist Philip Seargeant’s grandmother suffered a stroke, her thoughts remained trapped in her body. Although she had no cognitive damage, her paralyzed muscles didn’t allow her to speak or write. To communicate, she would point to letters printed on one side of a tattered...
Read MoreCrossings — How Road Ecology is Changing the Future of the Planet
Anyone who has crossed a busy road in a metropolis without well-regulated traffic, in say Mumbai, India, can understand the plight of a deer trying to cross a two-lane highway, in rural United States. Evolution has not prepared deer for encounters with automobiles. Over one...
Read MoreVirtual Therapeutics
The itch that cannot be scratched? Even worse is the pain in a missing limb. It is a maddening sensation and for some amputees, the feeling is very real. Called Phantom Limb Pain, the sensation has been described in medical literature as far back...
Read MoreThe mRNA Nobelist
One day in 1997, University of Pennsylvania molecular biologist Katalin (Kati) Karikó met a new hire at the photocopier who would change the trajectory of her research forever. At 42, the scientist had made little headway with her big idea that mRNA—the ephemeral molecule that...
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