When my mom said she was headed to the doctor for a sore knee last month, I didn’t think much of it. I figured she probably just twisted it doing yard work or something. But, when she called back to say her swollen knee was Lyme arthritis, she had my attention. And I braced myself…
The first mutant frog the kids found probably seemed like a sad fluke. The poor Northern Leopard Frog had one normal hind leg and one frail, fleshless one. But, then the class, which was out on a nature walk in 1995, found another misshapen frog—this one with only one leg—then limped another, and another. Half…
Neuroscience, physics, biology and birds are recurring topics of my conversations with Dennis Taylor, the community conversations editor at The Salinas Californian, where I interned during fall quarter. Every time I speak with Dennis about anything remotely scientific, a look of genuine excitement and interest comes over him. During one of our chats, he told…
Did you remember to invite your relatives to Thanksgiving? How about your extremely distant relatives? The folks at the San Francisco Zoo remembered. In fact, they laid out their fine china, cooked a colorful feast, and pulled up chairs for 15 distant relatives—the zoo’s lemurs. In an event called ‘Feast for the Beasts,’ the zoo’s…
Zooommbieeees… Hordes of people—numbed by the Great Recession, perhaps—have once again staggered toward fresh zombie fare. But unlike other zombie fever outbreaks, splatters from the pop-culture feast are landing in the far corners of science—and they’re leaving quite the mark. Since George Romero’s 1968, genre-defining film, Night of the Living Dead, zombie zeal has lurched…
