Book Review: Citizen Science, How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

By Dr. Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher Caren Cooper. (2016). Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery. Overlook Press: New York, NY. $28.95. While publications proliferate on the subject of citizen science, an introduction to inform and delight all readers has been conspicuously absent until Caren Cooper’s new book, Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery hit the shelves this spring. In the pages of Citizen Science we find compelling ...read more

Agar Art Contest Winners Grow Masterpieces with Microbes

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Finding Pneumo, by Linh Ngo of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (2nd place) No matter how flamboyant your shower curtain mold is, it couldn’t have competed with the fungus that won this year’s Agar Art contest. This is the third year the American Society for Microbiology has run the contest, asking for “works that are at their core an organism(s) growing on agar.” The artwork can be any kind of microbe colonizing any size or shape of petri dish. This year&rsq ...read more

Mice Born from Freeze-dried Space Sperm Are Doing OK

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The “space pups” made from freeze-dried sperm flown aboard the ISS. (Credit: Teruhiko Wakayama et al.) Before they were born, these mice were astronauts. Or, rather, the sperm that would go on to deliver half of their genetic material were. For nine months, mouse sperm was kept aboard the International Space Station, freeze-dried to preserve it. Brought back to Earth, the sperm was rehydrated, introduced to an egg and allowed to divide for about 20 days. The resulting mouse pups ca ...read more

A Survey of Our Secret Lives

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

What kinds of secrets does the average person keep? In a new paper, Columbia University researchers Michael L. Slepian and colleagues carried out a survey of secrets. Slepian et al. developed a ‘Common Secrets Questionnaire’ (CSQ) and gave it to 600 participants recruited anonymously online. Participants were asked whether they’d ever had various secrets, at any point in their lives. The results are a monument to all our sins: It turns out that extra-relational thoughts & ...read more