Sat 25 Oct 2008
It was nearly 5 pm at the Cabana Hotel in Palo Alto, and I was a healthy mix of exhausted and excited. I had just attended "Thinking Outside the Lab," a workshop session on communicating science to the public, my last session of the day and certainly the most enjoyable, if only for bolstering my [...]Sun 26 Oct 2008
I’m on the plane home, and I’m finding myself wishing that we could have stayed a few more days. But for now I’m content to sleep—I think I’ve gotten a combined ten hours or so of sleep since leaving for Indianapolis at 3:30 Friday morning, and it’s Sunday now. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, but [...]Thu 6 Nov 2008
Among the many topics Karen Heyman has covered during her career as a freelance science writer are neuroscience, genetics, and the Internet. Although she originally studied Film at New York University, Heyman found herself more interested in the Internet, which was experiencing huge growth in the mid-90’s. She worked as a technology and entertainment writer, [...]Fri 12 Dec 2008
You probably already know that people’s violence in relationships often stems from their parents. Still, just how violence is transmitted between generations remains unclear. Indiana University psychologists found that the strategies children of high-conflict couples take to handle social information differ significantly from their peers’, and these differences may persist into adulthood. Specifically, they found [...]Fri 12 Dec 2008
Dr. Richard Hardy’s virology laboratory is located in a secure area of Simon Hall, surrounded by loud red signs warning to keep out. The building smells faintly of cleaning supplies and yeast, a combination that I associate closely with scientific wet-work. Dr. Hardy’s laboratory studies the Sindbis virus, an alphavirus from the Togaviridae family. Michelle [...]Tue 16 Dec 2008
A longstanding fan of science, I appreciate Natalie Angier’s attempts in The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (2007) to enliven the field for a lay audience. At times she even succeeds. Still, I wish her book had more of the sciences’ elegant structure and less of the fluff she so [...]Thu 18 Dec 2008
Patrick Mundy is a senior in Cognitive Science and Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. His interests include the communication and philosophy of science, reptile care, music, and Chinese food, in that order. He aspires for the professorial life of research, teaching, and writing, a goal he hopes to achieve within the next three [...]