RoboSquirrel Lets Loose

RoboSquirrel Lets Loose

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0hyursVxG0&w=660&h=477] Squirrel robots are on the loose near San Jose, and they’re helping scientists at the University of California, Davis understand how their fleshy counterparts interact with rattlesnakes....
Mushrooms Take Center Stage

Mushrooms Take Center Stage

After four years of living near Santa Cruz, last weekend I finally ventured to the annual Fungus Fair for the first time.  With elements of nature, science, and hippie culture, it’s an event that sounded just so… Santa Cruz. My expectations were tempered after hearing...
David Cohn Experiments with Journalism

David Cohn Experiments with Journalism

David Cohn doesn’t look like the new face of journalism.  He’s boyish, with an untamed mop of black curls and a stubbly beard: Picture a darker Mark Zuckerberg, but more stylishly dressed. It’s early in the morning when Cohn comes to talk with our class about Spot.Us,...
Buzzline: Community Scientist at Work

Buzzline: Community Scientist at Work

Neuroscience, physics, biology and birds are recurring topics of my conversations with Dennis Taylor, the community conversations editor at The Salinas Californian, where I interned during fall quarter. Every time I speak with Dennis about anything remotely...
Open Source Nuke Hunting

Open Source Nuke Hunting

As my internship at the Monterey Herald came to a close today, I can’t help feel a little a bad for all of the amputeed pages and pages of research in my longer stories that were on the wrong side of the cut. The latest information to suffer this fate is from a...
Less Smoke, More Fire

Less Smoke, More Fire

I grew up near a fortress built during the French and Indian War and used to love historical reenacting, but I eventually quit. In the eyes of dominant reenacting culture, period-correct portrayal of a frontier woman meant that my male friends would be throwing...
Thanksgiving Lemur Lessons

Thanksgiving Lemur Lessons

Did you remember to invite your relatives to Thanksgiving? How about your extremely distant relatives? The folks at the San Francisco Zoo remembered. In fact, they laid out their fine china, cooked a colorful feast, and pulled up chairs for 15 distant relatives—the...
Making Room for Thanksgiving Stuffing

Making Room for Thanksgiving Stuffing

I didn’t grow up eating Thanksgiving dinner, but over the years I’ve learned how to do the traditional American turkey-day right. There’s the carving of large birds, the mashing of potatoes, and of course, the skipping of lunch. Most people I know...
Plants on a Hot Green Roof

Plants on a Hot Green Roof

There’s a room at UC Santa Cruz filled with chocolate and vanilla, cinnamon and green tea, bananas and pineapple.  But far from ready-to-eat desserts, all are leafy and green, basking in the humid light of one of the three UCSC campus greenhouses. A certain former...
Hacking for science and creating synesthesia

Hacking for science and creating synesthesia

This past weekend I willingly deprived myself of sleep in order to participate in Science Hack Day in San Francisco. What is a Hack Day? Well, a hack is a quick solution to a problem. Not necessarily pretty, but probably clever. A Hack Day is usually a 48 hour event...
Crabs Galore: From Fisherman to Pulsars

Crabs Galore: From Fisherman to Pulsars

One minute I’m milling around the dock of the Santa Cruz harbor, the next minute I’m hurtling out to sea on a 23-foot motorboat named “Aquaholic,” a chilly Pacific gale plastering hair across my face as I shout out questions about crab fishing and scribbling down the...
Bigger Birds in Central California?

Bigger Birds in Central California?

So I was a little worried when I read that birds are apparently getting bigger in the central Californian area. A team led by Rae Goodman from San Francisco State University studied data of bird populations of 40 years at one site and 27 years at another and found...