Throughout all of my training as a geneticist, I've never been taught about the original Eugenics Movement. What is Eugenics and why does it sound so familiar? The definition that I've found that best describes Eugenics is by Edward Larson in his book, Sex, Race, and Science: “Eugenics is that science which studies the inborn
Science plays an important role in our society. It answers many of the questions we encounter on a daily basis. Science allows us to send texts and pictures, and operate dozens of apps on our cellphones with just a swipe of the finger. We don't have to wonder if we should grab an umbrella today
The Real Ultra-marathoners Pause for a minute and think about how far you travel in a day. The average American walks around 2.5 miles each day. If you are an ultra-marathoner you might cover up to 100 at most. As a runner myself, the furthest I've run at one time is somewhere around 16 miles.
‘Tis the season for one of my favorite holiday traditions: selecting and decorating a Christmas tree. This annual holiday festivity became popular and widely adopted worldwide in the late 18th century as people started displaying ornately decorated evergreen conifer species (i.e. pines, spruces, firs) in their homes. Although the Christmas tree tradition now includes fake
Often the ocean can look idyllic and inviting on the surface. Exploration of the sea floor, however, shows a harsh and unforgiving place. The Gulf of Mexico brine pools investigated by Erik Cordes and his colleagues are a model example. Subject to salinity more than four times the amount of normal seawater, and full of
Arsenic was a favorite poison among murderers for a long time because of its lack of odor and taste, and until the mid-19th century it could not be detected in corpses. Large quantities of arsenic can kill a person very quickly. However, a risk faced by millions of people every day is the slow and
I love nothing more than waking on a summer's day to the sound of bird songs outside my window. If you read my last post on bird language, this should be no surprise. The piercing sirens of mated cardinal pairs, the churring of chickadees, the sweet murmurs of cedar waxwings—all of these are music to
Let's face it, we all love our oil. In fact, “addicted†may be a more appropriate word than “love.†The stuff practically runs through our veins alongside the caffeine and nicotine. We use oil, directly or indirectly, every single day. It heats our homes. It fuels our cars. It is our consumer lifeblood. To the
With the constant news of terror attacks, devastating civil wars, or even just political debates, our world seems irreconcilably divided. So when there is a problem so large that 193 countries agree to fight it together, you know it must be bad. The giant problem the UN General Assembly addressed this year at a High-Level
Mohammed Hafizur Rahmen is a Bangladeshi eggplant farmer who owns a single acre north of the country's capital Dhaka. Until recently, he spent two days a week every growing season spraying his crops with a toxic pesticide to ward off the “fruit and shoot borerâ€, a caterpillar-like pest that decimates crops throughout Asia. Despite frequent
Climate change is happening. What should we do about it? With climate change, we can expect serious consequences, including destruction of coastal communities by sea level rise, increased frequency of deadly heat waves, and worsening of crop-decimating draughts. Many of us have been hearing the same story for years: we need to cut carbon emissions
If you've ever watched an episode of the X-Files (or you're a self-proclaimed super fan, like myself) you might have been intrigued by the idea of spooky biological abnormalities creeping into cheesy 90's culture. The show often features frightening hybrid creatures born out of profound human error such as the “Flukeman,†a human/worm monster, a
