[A Sunflower Sea Star with several arms missing. Photo by Jerry Kirkhart via Flickr & CC 2.0 License.] In 2013, something strange started happening to the starfish, or sea stars, that live along North America’s Pacific Coast. Casual observers began reporting starfish that were “dissolving” or “melting”. “What you first see is they start getting …
[Photo courtesy of Brian Giesen via Creative Commons & Flickr] “Pitch Imperfect” is a series of blog posts where I highlight stories that I pitched but didn’t quite sell and discuss why it was tough to sell them. The goal is to share both interesting research stories and some of the obstacles in getting them …
The Talk: Killing a Midwest Generation In Plain English: How a Chicago non-profit from a low-income neighborhood got an asthma-inducing coal plant shut down The Speaker: Kimberly Wasserman of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) The Sponsor: Fossil Free MIT What it covered: When Kimberly Wasserman of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) took …
The book: Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby (2010) What it’s about: Asleep is the story of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic that followed in the wake of the 1918 flu. Encephalitis lethargica is mainly known by the nickname “Sleeping Sickness”, but shouldn’t be confused with African …