The term “organic” has become loaded. Like “climate change” and “Petraeus”, it appears so often in the media that, at a glance, it floods readers’ minds with preconceived notions. For me, “organic” says healthy families, smiling farmers, and sunny hills of colorful, sustainable food—a serious simplification. But, even having heard compelling arguments suggesting otherwise, that…
Last month, I wrote my first newspaper science story for the Santa Cruz Sentinel on a new paper about the diet of great white sharks. I wrote about the study’s analysis of stable isotopes in shark vertebrae as a record of a shark’s diet throughout its life. The researchers assumed they’d see the isotopic signature of…
As most native Hawaiian birds have gone extinct, “widowed” flowering plants are missing their lifelong partners – the birds that pollinate them. The loss of these partnerships threatens to drive some Hawaiian plant species to extinction, as many of these plants are not found anywhere else in the world. Biologist Clare Aslan investigated whether a…
In September, UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus of electrical engineering, Don Wiberg tried out for Santa Cruz’s new minor league NBA development team. While Wiberg, 76, did not make the team – he admits to not being very talented or even having played in the past 20 years – the fact that he can still…
Nothing ruins an invigorating day spent communing with nature more than the sight of poison oak. One minute you’re admiring the expansive beauty of an old oak tree, and the next you’re agonizing about whether you may have accidentally brushed up against its greasy little red-leafed cousin. Even if you avoid poison oak like the…
Ted Goldstein is not someone you would expect to find pursuing a doctorate in cancer research. After more than 25 years working in Silicon Valley, he left an executive-level position at Apple to return to grad school at his alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. UCSC’s Cancer Genomics Hub, led by David Haussler, serves as the…
“What’s hard to say?” This was Alan Alda’s first question to an audience full of particle physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on October 25. Alda’s talk, “Helping the Public Get Beyond a Blind Date with Science,” started by evoking the types of conversations, both personal and professional, that leave us fumbling for the…
I have a passion for cooking that’s uncommon for someone with so little culinary talent. Recipes involving chemical changes to ingredients (in other words, endeavors beyond assembling a sandwich), have a fail rate of about 25 percent in my kitchen. But it recently occurred to me that cooking is one of the primary ways I…
Before I was old enough to be embarrassed by such matters, I loved listening to my father’s loud conversations with elephants at the zoo. Egged on by my sister and I, he would purse his lips together and blow his cheeks out, making a loud trumpet that commanded the attention of everyone at the exhibit….
On an early morning run at New Brighton State Beach, I take the salt-tanged air deep in my lungs, grin at the seagulls shuffling out of my way, and glimpse the dark arcs of dolphins rising above the wave break. I count myself lucky to live beside the ocean—even when I’m forced to skip over…
