Charles Chiu in the lab with colleague Steve Miller. (Credit: Elisabeth Fall/UCSF)
Pathogens move fast.
You wake up one morning feeling ready to take on the world. On your way to work, you notice your throat’s a bit scratchy, your forehead a bit warm. By lunch you’ve got a pounding headache and it hurts to breathe. Co-workers agree, you’ve got whatever’s been going around. You end the day early, using the last of your strength to drag yourself to bed.
Identifying the org ...read more
Scientists refer to the study of biological toxins as toxinology (not to be confused with toxicology, with a C—as I explain below). From bacterial toxins like anthrax to the deadliest snake venoms, toxinology examines the chemical warfare between animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. This is the first in a new series I call Toxinology 101, where I explain and explore the fundamentals of toxin science to reveal the unusual, often unfamiliar, and unnerving world created by ...read more
By: Marc J. Kuchner
Eighty-seven years ago, this week, Clyde Tombaugh was poring over a pair of photographic plates, hoping to change the world. He was staring hard into an arcane device called a blink comparator, which allowed him to rapidly switch from viewing one image to the next. In those days before computers, that was the best tool he had for finding the faint, moving dot he was seeking, a new planet in our solar system.
When Tombaugh discovered Pluto in those photographic plat ...read more
(Credit: Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock)
What’s in a handshake? If the widespread scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s characteristic “yank and grab” is any indication, a lot.
If anything, however, the recent spate of armchair psychology surrounding his handshakes says as much about us as it does about him. A handshake, done well, sets a precedent for collaboration and trust. Executed incorrectly, a sloppy handshake is a cringeworthy affair to witness. W ...read more
Large storm waves crashing on the rocks near Santa Cruz, California. (Credit: Christine Hegermiller, U.S. Geological Survey)
Beaches and shorelines are locked in an eternal battle between land and sea.
The struggle usually comes out to a draw — the rate of erosion is offset by the amount of new sediment deposited. But as weather patterns grow more erratic and storms intensify, our shores could begin yielding ground to the waves.
The most recent El Niño event was one of the most en ...read more
Earth, seen as the faint dot in a sunbeam, is 4 billion miles away in this image from Voyager 1. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
We first glimpsed Earth’s curvature in 1946, via a repurposed German V-2 rocket that flew 65 miles above the surface. Year-by-year, we climbed a little higher, engineering a means to comprehend the magnitude of our home.
In 1968, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot William Anders captured the iconic Earthrise photo. We contemplated the beauty of our home.
But on Valentine’s D ...read more
What do I love most about this artist rendering of a pregnant Dinocephalosaurus? Is it capturing the marine reptile’s epic neck-to-body proportion? Is it the tasteful allusion to the offspring in her belly? No, it’s the freshly chomped fish in her mouth, and the bloody cloud around it. Nom nom nom. Don’t mess with Mom when she’s hungry. Credit: Dinghua Yang & Jun Liu.
Here’s some egg-citing news: for the first time in the fossil record, researchers have discove ...read more
Last week Retraction Watch covered a case of a psychology paper that was retracted after it emerged that the graduate student who collected the data had faked the results.
Here’s the retraction notice:
The retraction follows an investigation by the University of Alabama’s Office for Research Compliance. That investigation found that a former graduate student in William Hart’s lab altered the data in strategic ways. The investigation found that William Hart was unaware wh ...read more
