Posts

June 19, 2013

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9:30 PM | Unlocking Life’s Code … With a Museum Exhibit

Today’s Newscripts post was written by C&EN intern and genomics fiend Puneet Kollipara. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Human Genome Project’s completion—when scientists successfully sequenced nearly all the base pairs of human DNA. It’s also the 60th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. What [...]

June 18, 2013

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8:00 AM | Digits of the Devil

On Sunday evening, I was standing in our orchard watching the sunset when I turned around and saw a strange beam of light that appeared to rise from the east, directly opposite the setting sun. Crepuscular rays or “God’s Fingers” are pretty common around here, but usually these majestic light rays emanate from the sun. [...]

June 17, 2013

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3:54 PM | In Print: Prince Harry Turns into a Doll and Other Misleading Headlines

The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the print issue of C&EN. There’s an unfortunate trend that seems to be becoming increasingly popular in today’s science news world. The recipe goes like this: Take one misleading headline, add an introductory sentence [...]

June 15, 2013

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3:46 PM | The Last Word

June 10 – 14 This week, LWON got a new PoLWON! (not pictured at left) Her name is Roberta Kwok and you may remember her from her intriguing guest post about how investigators solved a grisly and tragic car crash. Roberta kicked the doors down with with an amazing primer on the history of the [...]

June 13, 2013

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5:00 PM | New Person of LWON: Roberta Kwok

We are overjoyed to announce that Roberta Kwok has become the newest person of LWON (or LaWONian, as some of us like to say). You’ve seen her here before. Her first guest post explained how a study to detect traffic patterns gave investigators new insight into a fatal car crash. Elsewhere, she’s written about synthetic [...]

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1:47 PM | Amusing News Aliquots

Silly samplings from this week’s science news, compiled by Sophia Cai, Bethany Halford, and Jeff Huber. Newest scare tactic to prevent teen births: photos of pregnant boys. [Today] Speaking of dude looks like a lady, Aerosmith’s organist is a leading geneticist in his spare time. [CNN] Mountain livin’ changes the way people talk. In a [...]

June 12, 2013

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8:00 AM | Something Up His Sleeve, Part 2

Yesterday I confessed my fear of magicians. Today I confront that fear by going to the source: Alex Stone, a magician I met at a party who, at my prompting, was kind enough to perform an impromptu set that thrilled me but that also, on the walk home, left me feeling uneasy. I later learned [...]

June 11, 2013

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12:48 PM | Hey, ACS, Where’s My Comic Book?

If you read this blog with any regularity (I know there’s at least one of you out there, two tops), you’ll remember a post I wrote awhile back bemoaning the lack of chemistry coloring books. I had just come across a supercool version about biology—filled with stem cells and neurons and viruses, oh my!—and was [...]

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9:00 AM | Restoring That Sense of Wonder

[Note from the author: Given the craziness of summer, I'm going to be a little lazy this week and repost something from my old blog. Many of the themes in this post echo Brian Switek's new book, My Beloved …

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8:00 AM | Something Up His Sleeve

Magicians scare me. Not magic. Magic is cool. I was at a party recently when I asked someone what he did and he said he was a magician and I said I hope he didn’t mind but would he possibly—and even before the request was out of my mouth he had produced a deck of [...]

June 10, 2013

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11:48 AM | The Most Energising Experience

Although I am lucky enough to have found my professional “true calling”, in the past few weeks – nay, months – I had seemingly forgot the feeling of it. As a child, I fell in love with nature, science, and … Continue reading →

June 08, 2013

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12:17 PM | The Last Word

June 3 -7, 2013 This week, Erik took on the Singularitarians. Cassie saw the ugly future of drone journalism. When you look out your kitchen window in winter, what’s out there looks simple. But Cameron told us what’s really going on under the snow. If you’re a Neanderthal, you’ll like guest poster Jude Isabella’s dating [...]

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2:59 AM | Friday 5, coming soon!

I hate to do it, but I have to postpone Friday 5 until tomorrow. Sleep… It’s a good thing! Especially when you’re looking at a 13 hour work day on Saturday. So, I’m headed off to sleep for now and … Continue reading →

June 07, 2013

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6:46 PM | Flame Challenge 2: And The Winners Are

Some 20,000 11-year-olds voted to determine the winners of the Flame Challenge 2 competition. Depending on the format of scientists’ responses to this year’s question, “What is time?” entries were categorized as written or visual. Nicholas Williams, a retired scientist who spent 33 years working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and ACS member Steven Maguire, [...]

June 06, 2013

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8:00 AM | A Chilling (Not Actually Possible) Future

Humans might someday become cyborgs and live forever. Really, that might happen. This was my take on a recent New York Times profile about Dmitry Itskov and his quirky quest to upload human brains into machines by 2045. It seems that this Russian former media magnate and propagandist has started a project to upload a human consciousness into [...]

June 04, 2013

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6:43 PM | In Print: Cooking With Cicadas

The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the current issue of C&EN. The cicadas are coming. Here at Newscripts headquarters in Washington, D.C., we’ve been tracking Brood II’s invasion progress warily. Senior Editor Linda Wang, who has survived previous infestations and lived to tell [...]

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12:40 PM | You say tomato, I say soda. Or is it pop?

Here’s a nifty new way of looking at some old regional differences in dialect. NC State graduate student Joshua Katz was looking for an idea for his end-of-year statistics project, when he came across interesting linguistics data from Dr. Bert Vaux of Cambridge University. Vaux had collected data on regional dialects in the U.S. via

June 03, 2013

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10:30 AM | That Four-Leaf Clover You Found May Not Be a Four-Leaf Clover

Are four-leaf clovers becoming more common? That was the question put to me by a reader recently. Apparently her kids are finding four-leaf clovers on a daily basis as they walk home from school. What gives? While it is possible that her children are simply amazing four-leaf clover finders, it’s more likely that the “four-leaf

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8:00 AM | If He Only Had a (Clue About the) Brain

David Brooks has done it again. In his New York Times op-ed column last Monday, Brooks portrayed psychiatry as a “semi-science” suffering from “Physics Envy.” He pointed to the publication of the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—or DSM-5—as evidence that psychiatry misrepresents itself as hard science. The column opens, “We’re living in an empirical age,” and it goes [...]

June 01, 2013

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8:00 AM | The Last Word

May 27 – 31, 2013 Heather’s last post is a case-in-point for why we’re going to miss her so much. It’s something you’ve never heard of before, told expertly and with great empathy: India’s great population explosion is being calmed by — who knew? — soap operas. Come back soon, Heather, and tell us another [...]

May 31, 2013

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8:00 AM | Your Guide to the Future

I used to think M.T. Anderson was prescient. Now I’m convinced he’s psychic. Anderson is the author of the young-adult novel Feed, a very funny — and deeply disturbing — book about the seductive power of social media. In the world of the novel, the fortunate have a “feed” implanted in their brains at birth, [...]

May 30, 2013

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5:22 PM | Death to the Drive-by N-word

Here’s something you should know about the N-word: It’s a slur. No, not THAT N-word. I’m talking about the Asian N-word: The Ni hao. What? You might say – doesn’t Ni hao just mean “hello” in Chinese? How could that possibly be a bad thing? I’ll tell you exactly how. The word “nigger” has become … Read more

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2:45 PM | Amusing News Aliquots

Silly samplings from this week’s science news, compiled by Sophia Cai, Bethany Halford, and Jeff Huber. Icy Siberian conditions preserve mammoth blood and muscle tissue. Can mammoth clones be far off? And will we be able to use them as vacuums and showers like the Flintstones did? [Siberian Times] Study finds that diet soda harms [...]

May 28, 2013

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8:38 PM | In Print: Mission to Mars, Molecular Fashion

The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the current issue of C&EN. Meet Anders. He’s 51 and Swedish. He’s also one of more than 78,000 people who have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. As this week’s Newscripts column explores, [...]

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1:00 PM | Heading to #ACSM13

As mentioned yesterday, I will attending the annual scientific meeting of the American College Sports Medicine this week. I was extremely impressed with last year’s conference in San Francisco, so I’m really looking forward to attending again this year.…

May 27, 2013

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3:43 PM | Thesis update and tips on surviving grad school

Over the past few years, I’ve given the odd update on how my thesis is progressing. Friend and colleague Atif Kukaswadia recently did a thesis update of his own, and given some recent developments I thought this would be …

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8:00 AM | Soap Operas versus the Population Bomb?

It’s early morning in a Mumbai train station. The video is grainy, but you can clearly make out a dense swarm of humanity along the platform. By my count, the crowd stands at least ten or twelve people deep, males for the most part, many dressed in light short-sleeved shirts, the kind you’d wear in [...]

May 25, 2013

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9:27 AM | The Last Word

May 20 – 24 Paleo-BS or solid science? This week, Cassie investigated the new obsession with intermittent fasting. Cameron examined the void that lurks on the far side of achievement. Christie revealed some of the most surprising and least expected effects of guns. Heather told us how experimental archaeology is helping answer the question of [...]

May 24, 2013

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11:00 AM | Buds

“Did they ever meet?” I would get the question all the time. People would ask what I was working on, and I would say a book about Einstein and Freud, and then would come the question. Same thing with my next book. People would ask what I was working on, and I would say a [...]

May 23, 2013

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4:47 PM | Amusing News Aliquots

Silly samplings from this week’s science news, compiled by Sophia Cai and Jeff Huber. Website dares to ask the question millions of Premier League fans have wondered for years: Is the manager of Arsenal’s soccer team a bald eagle? [Grantland] Don’t go chopping off your fingers for kicks just yet, but we’re one step closer [...]