I recently binged the Wondery podcast Bad Batch from reporter Laura Beil. Like her previous podcast Dr. Death, Beil leads us through another fascinating medical mystery. This time, a handful of patients in Texas, Florida, and Arizona develop life-threatening infections after receiving an injection of stem cells.
Continue reading The Promise of Stem Cells Sells
Tardigrades have significantly bolstered their IMDb profiles over the past year. With appearances in Star Trek: Discovery and South Park, the adorable micro-animals are having a moment. Continue reading Tardigrades are all the rage
It’s that time of year again. The leaves are a-changing, there is a crispness in the air, and you’re finding it impossible to NOT purchase Halloween candy that you will inevitably eat and have to buy again anyway. Oh, and your local pharmacy, Facebook feed, tv, magazines, and just about any other media outlet are reminding you to go get your flu shot.
Cancer.
It’s a word everyone recognizes, but no know truly understands. Even when it ravishes through your own body, setting up impenetrable fortresses, and taking over each territory in an ugly game of Risk, it is near impossible to comprehend.
That’s because cancer is an enigma. For life, we need death. For the proper formation and function of our organs, cells need to die. Though cancer may be the cause of death for so many, cancer is enigmatically immortality. The agelessness of cancerous cells is what results in the shutdown of organ systems and ultimately death.
Death is as natural a process as life, and yet we grapple for understanding in its wake. Being the salient individuals we are, comprehending our own mortality is an impossible endeavor, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. No one in our time has put it in quite the same context as Dr. Paul Kalanithi in his posthumous memoir When Breath Becomes Air.
This article is not a review of his book, which was one of the few I’ve ever read front to back in a single sitting–it’s short, but also exceedingly captivating. This is, simply and meaninglessly, my appreciation for Kalanithi’s life and exploration of his own mortality, in his own words. Continue reading When air becomes breath
It was hotter than hot–over 90 degrees with a thick southern humidity that hits you like a bus when you step outside. As I pulled on my long sleeve shirt, I chuckled at the thought of wearing it on the surface, 250 feet above my current location. It was 55 degrees where I stood and boy was it fabulous.
With 405 miles of mapped cavities and some unknown distance of unmapped offshoots, Mammoth caves in Kentucky is the longest cave system in the world. I experienced a mere few miles of this wonder, with at least a couple of those miles intertwining and overlapping each other like spaghetti in a bowl. However little distance walked, crawled, & climbed, it was undoubtedly one of the coolest adventures of my life–both figuratively and literally. Continue reading Cool as a cave
No, I’m not talking about unearthing some hidden family secret (you can exhale a sigh of relief, mom). Here I refer to fruit flies growing up in the dark as participants in a 62-year long experiment at Kyoto University in Japan. More than 1,500 generations of flies have been reared in total darkness ever since Syuiti Mori shut the blinds on his flies in 1954 starting one of the longest laboratory experiment on evolution. Continue reading Growing up in the dark
In his new book, Thing explainer: complicated stuff in simple words, Randall Munroe uses the top ten hundred words in the language spoken most in the world and lots of pictures to explain how some things work. In a world with too many big words, this book is great. However, some of the top words, simple enough alone, are still changed for others and one of the big words that tell you what the book is (marked above) isn’t even in the top words! Despite several wrong word choices, Thing explainer hits the mark for interestingly explaining things.
I finally got around to reading Michael Crichton’s posthumous novel Micro, finished after Crichton’s death by another popular sci-fi author Richard Preston. Since I first tore through Jurassic Park in 7th grade (more 20 years ago…yikes!), I have been a huge fan of Crichton’s imaginative worlds of science fiction. Not to mention that I was so inspired by Preston’s The Hot Zone that I entered the fields of infectious diseases and immunology for my career. So imagine my disappointment to discover that Micro is little more than a science-themed knock-off of the wacky Rick Moranis comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
I have to admit, it hurts me a little–ok A LOT–to write this piece. I’ve probably done a bit more research than was needed because I was hesitant to come to the realization that I’ve lost respect for one of my favorite athletes. This feeling doesn’t take away 4 championships from a franchise with arguably the best NFL coach of all time, but it does still hurt.
Because Tom Brady may just be the newest poster child for pseudoscience. What an idiot.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter were loaded with posts like this one from Donald Trump:
There was immediate and wide-spread panic among U.S. citizens, perpetuated by reports like this, and this.
At first, I too, was alarmed at the thought of bringing such a deadly disease to America. Then I thought about the virus life cycle, how it infects humans, and how it spreads and I was, at least somewhat, relieved. Continue reading The Ebola Frenzy