Editor’s Picks

Breaking the two-hour tape: Engineering the fastest marathon run in history

What does it take to reach the peak of athletic performance and break barriers thought to be beyond human capabilities? One of these barriers is the two-hour marathon, a feat which requires running 26.2 miles while maintaining an average pace of 4:34 per mile. At that speed, you could run the 100-yard length of a

Fanning the flames

In recent years, it feels like we have watched parts of the world be swallowed whole by fire, painting a very apocalyptic picture of the future. Nearly 40,000 square miles in Australia were decimated by bushfires last year. California's Camp Fire displaced about 50,000 residents, and Indonesia saw over 2 million acres of land consumed

Double Merle Dogs

Dog coats come in a seemingly endless variety of patterns, lengths, textures and colors, determined by their genetic makeup. Just 8-14 different genes are responsible for most of these differences in coat color and pigmentation. Dogs inherit two alleles, or variations, of each of these genes, one from the father and one from the mother.

Azure is the New Black: Creating a Blue Rose

Floriography, better known as the language of flowers, doesn't refer to a communication method between plants. Rather, it is the Victorian era practice of gifting arranged flowers to communicate a coded message: a red rose for love, a white tulip for forgiveness–things you may want to be familiar with this upcoming Valentine's Day. Long before

The roots of your tea

While coffee has seemingly had a cultural renaissance, with independent coffee roasters popping up all over the country, and even the naivest 7 year old being able to spout the  difference between arabica and robusta, a far older, and ancient drink seems to remain in obscurity in the continental United States. The drink I'm referring

Vegetables are a social construct

My particular confluence of knowledge (a blend of economics, environmental policy, and crop science) tends to leave me completely overwhelmed by the discordance among human nutritional needs, environmental health, and global agricultural systems. So, I let out a tiny gasp of elation when the Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious general medical journals, released

Cleaning up Chernobyl with Sunflowers

On April 26, 1986, in the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, a group of engineers working on the No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accidentally caused one of the greatest environmental disasters known to mankind. 50 tons of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere and dozens of lives were lost. Pripyat was

The Magic Of Curries: A Spicy Science

Have your lunch breaks gotten boring? How about an enticing curry to spice up your taste buds? Curries like korma, rogan josh, jalfrezi and tikka masala are more than just food – they are an experience. An explosion of sweet, savory, spicy, and sour flavors all at once – each bold in its own right,

The Careful Chaos of Metamorphosis

Imagine for a moment that you have just welcomed a beautiful baby into the world. Over the next fourteen days your baby multiplies 3,000 times in size to that of an elephant, climbs up a tree, tears off its skin, and 10 days later flies away as a pterodactyl. This probably sounds like a ridiculously

Scroll to Top