Dogs Sniff Out Clues to Cancer
Dogs play a crucial role in human cancer research. More young scientists and physicians should know this, says Floryne O. Buishand, a Young Scientist at the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
Stories by Kathleen Raven
What Is Success?
"Goodbye don't mean gone." – attributed to Ray Charles "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." – Flannery O'Connor When New York calls, you listen, you go.
Still-Life Food Is So 21st Century
In his Haarlem studio, Dutch painter Willem Claeszoon Heda took care to shadow in creases on a damask tablecloth and added enough yellow to make light bounce off a pewter pitcher.
Of Course GMOs Are Not Harmful, But Maybe . . .
History laughs at the losing teams whose scientific theories crumble under the weight of evidence. The Sun orbits the Earth. Continents stand still.
Artificial intelligence reduces perturbation and disturbance related to table d’hte
Note: In the spirit of creativity, I’ve written this blog post in the style of an academic article. It is clearly not a true academic article.
Biased But Necessary: Single Case Studies
Like a kid who skips the copyright information that precede iPad games, I go straight to the clinical cases in the New England Journal of Medicine whenever I get my hands on a copy.
The other selfie: a single case study experiment on “clean eating”
Since I began routinely reading Scientific American comments online and in the magazine’s letters to the editor, I’ve encountered a recurring theme: Readers lament that the celebrated publication isn’t as scientific as it once was in the fifties or the nineties (depending on who is writing).
Conservation Tillage – A brief instructional video
For one year, my Ecology major professor and I met during each of the seasons at his teaching farm and lab, Spring Valley EcoFarms, to record another crucial step of the conservation tillage process.
Tannosomes and the trickle-around effect: a new cell organelle is discovered
Last week, when French researchers unveiled a newly discovered plant organelle related to wine and tea, I waited for frenetic coverage. And waited.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
The following is a parable grounded in science with an aim toward Socratic questioning. It’s dinnertime somewhere. A kid pushes a small pile of sautéed broccoli to the plate’s edge and sighs wistfully.
"Hey, you are good why are you not a physicist?"
Nobel Laureate Steven Chu with young researcher Bettina Keller. Photo by Kathleen Raven On the last day of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, the prize winners, young researchers and journalists mingled together on a boat ride to Mainau Island.
Ada Yonath and the Female Question
Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath waits on the left wing of the stage before giving her lecture on July 3. Photo by Kathleen Raven Just minutes after Ada Yonath learned of her shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on the ribosome in October 2009, she answered another phone call.
Energy storage, rare metals and the next ice age
Four Nobel Laureates discussed a wide range of energy storage and conversion problems and possible solutions on Wednesday. Photo by Kathleen Raven The holy grail of energy storage may lie in chemical bonds, but a process for making this happen remains unknown.
Imaging the near invisible with TEM: a master class
Though nanometer-level imaging has come far with transmission electron microscopy, Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman (Nobel Prize 2011, Chemistry) warned his master class audience on Tuesday that today’s images will seem primitive a few years in the future.
Chemistry and physics: one needs the other
“Quantum theory has opened to us the microscopic world of particles, atoms and photons,” explained Nobel Laureate Serge Haroche, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics with David Wineland.
Cataloguing the Impact of Lindau Meetings
Prestigious achievements like the Nobel Prize create powerful networks. Within these networks, scientists share ideas, researchers collaborate with resources and writers cover stories.
Lindau 2013: Videos with a personality, flow and message
After learning about the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau through an online science video collection, Edson Filho will now be behind the camera making films himself as a video blogger at this year’s meeting.
Behind the Greatest Experiments: Basic Research
Insight must precede application . — Max Planck, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918One summer day a young Martin Chalfie walked out of a lab after a particularly frustrating experiment.
Staten Island's "Bluebelt" Doesn't Fight Superstorms, but Plays Crucial Role in Managing Excess Rainfall
During an eerily foreshadowing talk I attended the week before Sandy came crashing ashore, New York City’s climate resilience advisor, Leah Cohen, assured the small attending audience that PlaNYC 2030, a tentative map for the city’s sustainable growth, outlined no such plans to “buy back” developed areas in the city—even those dangerously close to the water’s edge.
David Blaine's Electrical Stunt Could Create Harmful Ozone
One million volts of electricity could zap the magician as well as the lungs of onlookers
