When I think about what it means to be a science journalist, I think about chocolate. I’m not kidding. One night when I went to a talk about the science of food, and one of the presenters, a Harvard professor/master chef, started telling us about the difference between good and bad chocolate. “If you take …
Month: April 2014
The Talk: The BICEP2 Results and What They Mean: The First Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Early Universe In Plain English: The guys who came up with gravitational wave theory explain the gravitational wave story that’s been blowing up everybody’s Facebook feed in terms undergrads can understand The Speakers: Alan Guth of MIT (the …
The Talk: People’s Science: Bodies & Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier In Plain English: Sociologist investigates the tensions between the stem cell research community and racial minorities and/or low-income communities The Speaker: Ruha Benjamin of Boston University The Sponsor: BU Discoveries Lecture Series What it covered: Dr. Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist who studies scientists …
The Talk: Cardiac Reprogramming: From Developmental Biology to Regeneration In Plain English: How to turn the heart-dwelling cells that build connective tissues into replacements for damaged heart muscle cells The Speaker: Dr. Deepak Srivastava, MD of UC-SF‘s Gladstone Institutes The Sponsor: MIT Biology Colloquium What it covered: Dr. Deepak Srivastava is a cardiologist who experiments …
The Talk: Regulating signaling networks through pausing of RNA polymerase II In Plain English: Cells sometimes keep the RNA-builder enzyme “paused” at the first few base pairs in the gene, which leaves the gene somewhere between “on” and “off”. (It’s kind of like propping a door to avoid getting locked out, except more complicated.) The …