[Image by Wokandapix via Pixabay and Creative Commons 2.0 License.] Imagine you’ve been invited to a fancy dinner at a millionaire’s house. The table is set. The silverware gleams. The guests are chitchating about who does what for work and the season finale of Game of Thrones when the dinner host arrives and announces that …
[Above: Drawing of Octopus vulgaris by Comingio Merculiano (1845-1915) circa 1896, published in Jatta Giuseppe (1860-1903). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.] This post is the first in the series aimed at people who write speculative fiction–sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc–and are looking for worldbuilding inspiration. In each post, we’ll take a look at a biological trait and explore …
[Mast cells from a sinus stained in blue. Image via Wikimedia Commons & CC 2.0] On July 10, 2010, a DC restauranteur came down with what seemed to be food poisoning. He had no energy and no appetite. Rashes flared up. He could barely get out of bed. First hours and then days dragged by …
[A hybrid orchid. Photo by Mark Freeth.] [“Molecularization of Identity” Workshop Recap, Part 2] Genomes of indigenous people, which often include genes found nowhere else in the world, can be powerful symbols for nations that want to showcase their uniqueness. But when the Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica (INMEGEN) set out to find examples …
[Image via Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary & Creative Commons] [“Molecularization of Identity” Workshop Recap, Part 1] The diagram of racism was shockingly simple: four highlighted brain regions with black arrows between them, forming an almost-isosceles triangle. [Diagram by Elizabeth Phelps’ group at NYU via The Brain Bank blog] Perception. Identification. Regulation. Those are the …
[Image via the NIH Image Gallery. Photo by Alex Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott Schwartz, and Gillian Griffiths. Full video, complete with narration here.] Under the Radar: A series of listicles about biology concepts you definitely won’t find in newspaper headlines. #1: Be a Navigation App for Immune Cells Natural killer cells, or “NK cells” are the …
About the “Under the Radar” series: Some scientific concepts come up again and again in interviews with scientists but never find their way into newspaper headlines. Each post in this series follows one of those biology “bogeys” that fly under journalism’s radar through 3 different mini-stories. Story #1: Scientists splice up a CRISPR chicken…and find …