Summer beckons in the northern latitudes. As temperatures warm, beachgoers will flood sandy coasts, carrying bags of potato chips and sandwiches. Picnics will sprout in parks supplied with pink watermelon wedges and soda pop. Feasts ripe for people, and undoubtedly bugs too. In mere seconds flies and bees can swarm, but how do they sniff…
Let’s try something new. I predicted that my story on a ‘Measles Outbreak Traced to a Fully Vaccinated Patient for First Time’ would generate a cloud of comments on Facebook (Science Magazine + ScienceNOW). Like a storm offshore, I saw it coming. So I posed extra questions to my sources that could cover the eventual…
Fossilized feces may sound gross, but its hidden lessons about microbes certainly don’t stink. A petrified piece of poop—called a “coprolite”—from the 14th century has unveiled the earliest evidence of antibiotic resistance genes in the human gut microbiome. The findings reveal how these genes were swapped among bacteria long before the era of antibiotics and…
He’s grown bigger since the last video. Chico chopped off his own tail a few months back (I think maybe he was upset about being in his cage). Such is a life in captivity for a sailfin dragon as retold on YouTube, where there are over 1,400 videos of Hydrosaurus lizards. The vibrant reptiles are often…
Doe-eyed kids will rise from their comfy beds on Christmas, eager to rush downstairs and unwrap the presents under the tree, all the while, unwittingly taking a huge dump on the environment. U.S. household waste is highest between Thanksgiving and New Years, rising by 25 percent—or an extra one million tons during the holiday season….
Dressed in orange and black, they have traveled epic distances, through the unforgiving environs of urban development, only to arrive with feverish anticipation for what’s to come. Who are these eager travelers? Legions of kids flooding into Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif. to view the return of migrating Monarch butterflies. Every autumn,…
