by Kelly Servick | Jan 24, 2013 | Posts
I’ve been doing a lot of haphazard story-sniffing lately, and I noticed a common fragrance: scientists and engineers doing fascinating work on a microscopic budget. They’re not just scraping by with meager funding, they’re showing that cheaper projects can have real...
by Ryder Diaz | Jan 22, 2013 | Posts
Sharing science in the days of YouTube Steven Ward has a pretty good trick. He can drop you right into the heart of a natural disaster and you’ll come out unscathed. Guaranteed. Tsunami? Earthquake? Volcanic explosion? He’ll even take requests. Ward creates computer...
by Chris Palmer | Jan 17, 2013 | Posts
Marine biologists have identified a family of genes that make some corals more resilient to unusually high temperatures, providing hope that the devastation of the world’s reef-building coral population can be reversed. Reef-building corals are a critical part of...
by Thomas Sumner | Jan 15, 2013 | Posts
2012 was a big year for science. From tiny particles to worlds millions of miles away, there were a lot of science stories worth reading. Here is a compilation of the top five of the year, according to the point-score given by users of Reddit.com. For each major story...
by Liz Devitt | Dec 2, 2012 | Posts
When my neighbor cranks up his stereo, the bass makes my adjoining apartment walls hum. If the percussion ramps up, then my ears ring, too. But, I don’t mind, since I usually like music my neighbor plays. If I don’t like what I’m hearing, I’m quick to ask him to turn...
by Thomas Sumner | Nov 30, 2012 | Posts
As the Curiosity rover safely studies rocks on the surface of Mars, a NASA mission on route to Pluto may find itself on a treacherously rocky path. NASA announced last month that the $650 million New Horizons space probe’s planned trajectory during its July 2015 flyby...
by Kelly Servick | Nov 28, 2012 | Posts
In Georgia, bird watching kept me in touch with the seasons. The winter woods near my house were dominated by the high trill of Pine Warblers. When Swamp Sparrows fattened up for migration and cleared out of the fields around the banding station where I volunteered, I...
by Laura Poppick | Nov 26, 2012 | Posts
The term “organic” has become loaded. Like “climate change” and “Petraeus”, it appears so often in the media that, at a glance, it floods readers’ minds with preconceived notions. For me, “organic” says healthy families, smiling farmers, and sunny hills of colorful,...
by Paul Gabrielsen | Nov 21, 2012 | Posts
Last month, I wrote my first newspaper science story for the Santa Cruz Sentinel on a new paper about the diet of great white sharks. I wrote about the study’s analysis of stable isotopes in shark vertebrae as a record of a shark’s diet throughout its life. The...
by Ryder Diaz | Nov 19, 2012 | Posts
As most native Hawaiian birds have gone extinct, “widowed” flowering plants are missing their lifelong partners – the birds that pollinate them. The loss of these partnerships threatens to drive some Hawaiian plant species to extinction, as many of these plants are...
by Chris Palmer | Nov 16, 2012 | Posts
In September, UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus of electrical engineering, Don Wiberg tried out for Santa Cruz’s new minor league NBA development team. While Wiberg, 76, did not make the team – he admits to not being very talented or even having played in the...
by Jessica Shugart | Nov 14, 2012 | Posts
Nothing ruins an invigorating day spent communing with nature more than the sight of poison oak. One minute you’re admiring the expansive beauty of an old oak tree, and the next you’re agonizing about whether you may have accidentally brushed up against its greasy...
