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Climate Scientist Charts an Early Start for the Epoch of Man
Ancient rice paddies released significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere, but scientists disagree on whether they helped trigger a change in climate. When did the Epoch of Man begin? In recent...
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Scientists Eye Volcanic Conclusion to Atmospheric Mystery
The Soufrière Hills eruption in Montserrat in 1995Scientific outlines of global warming have remained relatively unchanged for decades. Climate scientists, however, armed with better satellites and...
View ArticleWhen a Scientific Metaphor Becomes a Burden
In any science, it’s hard to talk to the outside world without resorting to metaphor and analogy. That is especially true for the nascent field of synthetic biology, which promises to apply the ideas...
View ArticleConstructing Synthetic Biology, One Breadboard at a Time
If there’s a point that may be lost in my recent take on synthetic biology, published this week in The Chronicle Review, it’s this: Once you get past the inflated rhetoric, synthetic biology still...
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Wolves Teach Scientists Their Limitations
The “West-End Trio,” one of two wolf packs remaining on Isle Royale. The gray wolves of Michigan’s Isle Royale may soon go extinct. But before they do, they’re offering an important lesson for...
View ArticleHistorians, Dabbling in Science Fiction, Evoke a Climate Collapse
Prepare yourselves, dear readers: The United States of North America is coming. Writing in the newest issue of Dædalus, two historians of science, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, have taken on a...
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CO2 Level to Reach 400, Soon Enough
Above all else, Charles D. Keeling was fastidious with his data. A couple of years ago, I found myself on assignment at Mauna Loa Observatory, the U.S. weather station perched just below the summit...
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Geologists Chip Away at Mystery of Climate’s Influence on Volcanoes
David Ferguson and his colleague Sebastian Watt (above) learned a lot from Chilean road cuts, some striated with layers of basaltic scoria. If there’s a lesson David Ferguson has learned in his early...
View ArticleBending the Curve on a Long War’s Mental Toll
Washington — The annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, held here over the Memorial Day weekend, presented plenty of worry for those concerned over the field’s recent,...
View ArticleThere Is No Gene for Finishing College
A couple of years ago, Daniel J. Benjamin, a behavioral economist and associate professor at Cornell University, noticed a disturbing trend in genoeconomics, the nascent discipline that seeks to tie...
View ArticleClaims of Detection Confuse Hunt for Football’s Brain-Trauma Disease
For football fans, there is no time longer than the two weeks, in late January, between the NFL’s conference-championship games and the Super Bowl. It’s a news wasteland, a long pause in the...
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High in Sky, a Refrain: ‘Squawk, Data’
A red kite, sans blog. Copyright Sean Gray Like any young adult moving to a strange new land—a common occurrence at this time of year—Wyvis, a resident of Scotland, took to blogging about her new home...
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Hallucinations Happen, and That Can Be OK
One hallmark of the revolution in psychiatric research begun by the National Institute of Mental Health, as I explored in The Chronicle Review last week, is the sliding scale of the many symptoms...
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In Vancouver, a Young Science Confronts Its Limits
Black rockfish Consider, if you will, the black rockfish. Its skin a mottled black-gray, its belly white, and its dorsal fin spiny, the black rockfish is a saltwater species of unremarkable size and...
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A Disease Ecologist and His Discontents
The white-footed mouse, a favored home of the Lyme bacterium. Copyright John White If we save the animals, do we, in the end, save ourselves? There is so much nature can do for us. It can clean our...
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What’s Driving Human Evolution Now?
Sterling Hayden as Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (left), with Peter Sellers as Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake in Dr. Strangelove (Photo from Wikimedia Commons) Last year, when Sir David Attenborough, the...
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