Body
In Search of a Tuberculosis Vaccine
When I told a co-worker yesterday that I was going on a tour of a tuberculosis vaccine research facility, she asked, "is TB still a problem?" Here in the United States, the disease is rare—only 12,904 cases were reported in 2008—and generally treatable with antibiotics. Outside of North America, Au...
July 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
You Don't Know the Back of Your Hand
Here's an experiment you can try (right now if you're sitting at a desk or table): take your left hand (or right hand if you're left-handed) and place it palm towards the floor beneath the table surface. Now place a piece of paper on top where your hand is. Draw 10 dots representing where you think...
June 21, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Spoonful of Pickle Juice...Helps Muscle Cramps Go Down
Midway across the pool, my calf muscle seized up. I grabbed hold of the lane line, pulled my toes back towards my shin and waited for the charley horse to release.Unfortunately for me, the experience has become a familiar one. It seems that whenever I’m in the thick of training for a road race (and...
June 16, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
Wearing a Water Filter
Water is something that's easy to take for granted, especially in a developed country where the taps run clean and clear. But the story is very different in the rest of the world, where nearly one billion individuals lack access to clean and safe water, and women and children can spend hours each d...
May 24, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Mestizos and Medicinas: Race-Based Medicine in Latin America
“At my age and with so much mixed blood I no longer know for sure where I belong. Nobody knows it in these lands ... and I believe it will take centuries to know it,” Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote. He was referring, of course, to the mixing of genomes that took place in Latin ...
May 13, 2010 |
By Brendan Borrell
Clean Hands, Clear Conscience
It's human nature to regret our decisions. Make a choice and you're likely to think you made the wrong one. But not if you wash your hands, say scientists from the University of Michigan in a new study from Science.In the experiment, 40 participants were asked to select and rank 10 music CDs. They ...
May 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
How Our Brains Make Memories
Surprising new research about the act of remembering may help people with post-traumatic stress disorder
May 2010 |
By Greg Miller
The Bacterial Evidence on Our Keyboards
Late last year, the television show Mythbusters showed that our computer keyboards are crawling with microorganisms. Now scientists from the University of Colorado have shown that those bacteria can be used to identify a computer's user.Germophobes don't want to know this, but our bodies are covere...
March 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Odd Malaria Risk Factor: Drinking Beer
Here in the United States, we rarely have to worry that a mosquito bite will cause malaria. Like Canada, Australia, much of Europe and a few other places, we've been designated "malaria-free" by World Health Organization. Other places aren't so lucky. Nearly one million people died from the disease...
March 11, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Vaccines Don't Cause Autism
It's rare in science and science writing to make definitive statements, particularly about causation. We like to add what I call "wishy washy" words like "may" and "probably" and "perhaps." So when scientists or science writers make definitive statements like "vaccines don't cause autism" and "vacc...
March 04, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Skeletons of Shanidar Cave
A rare cache of hominid fossils from the Kurdistan area of northern Iraq offers a window on Neanderthal culture
March 2010 |
By Owen Edwards
The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors
Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," are changing ideas about human origins
March 2010 |
By Ann Gibbons
A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces
John Gurche, a “paleo-artist,” has recreated strikingly realistic heads of our earliest human ancestors for a new exhibit
February 25, 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
Stephen Hawking's Initials in the Big Bang's Echo
Scientists have released their latest, most detailed map of the cosmic microwave background--that faint glow of radiation left over from the Big Bang--and Stephen Hawking's initials are still there. The S and H have been spotted in previous versions of the image, which is sometimes known as WMAP fo...
February 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Neuroscience Sounds Like
Neuroscience has always been a scary topic for me. I studied ecology and marine science and viewed brain science as another language, another world, kind of how John Cleese "explains" it in this video. Enjoy!(Hat tip: Boing Boing)
February 04, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Barefoot Running Debate
My husband’s favorite story to tell about his first marathon is that a woman in stocking feet beat him.“And it was in Vermont…in October…on gravel roads,” he always adds, still amazed at the freakish phenom.That was in 2006, and now just over three years later, barefoot running, though clearly not ...
January 28, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
Nine Science Stories You Should Have Read This Year
It's also been a good year for science stories in Smithsonian magazine, including our special issue, Exploring the Frontiers of Science. Here are nine you should read if you haven't already:Gene Therapy in a New Light: A husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewi...
December 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Are Americans Stuck to their Cubicles?
After a debilitating bicycle accident kept her inactive, Mary Collins toured the country studying Americans’ sedentary lifestyle
December 29, 2009 |
By Abigail Tucker
Eight Awful Movies for Science in the 2000s
Even a bad movie can be enjoyable under the right circumstances. Sometimes, though, you wish you hadn't bothered. Here are eight clunkers from the last decade: Erin Brockovich (2000): Julia Roberts won an Academy Award for her work in this true-life story of a woman who fought against polluters in ...
December 17, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Heart Disease Found in Ancient Egyptian Mummies
Heart disease may appear to be a recent problem, brought on by the processed foods and sedentary lifestyles of modern living, but it's been plaguing humanity since ancient times, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.A team of scientists from the United States ...
November 18, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
