Rebecca Stevers was forced to flee Dry Creek Road in October as her husband and their neighbors battled to keep the Nuns Fire from jumping the ridge and annihilating their Napa Valley, California home. She took her children to a friend-of-a-friend’s rental property in San Francisco where she thought they were safe from the threat…
On May 26, 2006, an unusual volcano sputtered to life in Sidoarjo, Indonesia. Instead of spewing ash or lava, the volcano, known as Lusi, spits globs of mud high into the air. 11 years have gone by, 60,000 people have been displaced, and 13 people have been killed. The eruption shows no signs of stopping;…
A new study published this October in Nature Ecology and Evolution closed a chapter on a decade-long debate in biology and raises questions about how we view the evolution of complex animal traits. Since 2008, biologists have argued whether sponges or comb jellies, marine jelly-like animals also called ctenophores (pronounced: TEEN-oh-fores), are the earliest relative…
On a crisp Saturday in October I’m standing behind the bar at Byington Vineyard & Winery while pouring wine for a lively bachelorette party. I ask the ladies how they managed to find the bright pink Hummer limousine that dropped them off right at our door. One of the women, embarrassed, grins and explains it was their only option for a chauffeur with such short notice. She goes on to say they originally…
The Affordable Care Act has left hospitals short on doctors and waiting room chairs. As the newly-insured queue for healthcare, some patients are shelling out thousands to skip the line. Hospitals are increasingly catering to more affluent patients, but some physicians wonder whether this is ethical, or even effective. Concierge medicine has been a hot…
When I first saw the acoustic tag, I couldn’t imagine inserting it under fish’s skin. It was the size and shape of the SPF 45 ChapStick that was melting in my pocket. The tag would soon be surgically implanted into a Nassau grouper, a medium-sized fish, but Dr. Rick Nemeth, and his team at University…
I first heard about Born to Run, the Chris McDougall book that sparked the barefoot running craze, during my freshman year of college in 2012. At the time, before I got bogged down with trivialities like torn anterior cruciate ligaments (turns out those really matter), I was a running fiend. I ran every day. On…
On the muddy grounds of the deep ocean, sea cucumbers are playing nanny to young king crabs. But are they being compensated?’ These sea cucumbers, commonly known as sea pigs, are bottom-dwelling creatures that look like grapefruit jelly with legs and could fit in the palm of a hand. Juvenile King crabs are around half…
Every night as Marshall Hinsley walks through his farm in Texas, hundreds of tiny bright dots light up the land when he shines his flashlight into the distance. “It’s like glitter,” he says. “Those are all the eyes of spiders just blanketing the landscape.” Hinsley’s farm didn’t always dazzle. The spiders – and a zoo…
I recently photographed a banana slug for a short article I was writing about banana slug slime for the Santa Cruz Hilltromper, a website for nature lovers in the area. “Okay, now turn your head to the left… down a little… actually can you crawl up this rock a bit more for me? I’d really…
