In 2010, I wrote an article for ScienceNow titled “Fish Oil Fights Inflammation.” The article focused on new research showing that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil block inflammation in cells and fight diabetes in mice. Jerrold Olefsky, who led the research, even had an explanation for how they do this. This whole process […]
Health/Medicine
“Mommy, why did you kill me?” was the first line of the comment. It devolved from there into a maudlin, hallucinatory, and occasionally Freudian fantasy of an aborted child’s final message to his mother, and it ended with the little guy playing baseball with God in heaven while the mother burned in hell. The reply […]
I’d like to be a mother—someday. Now is not a good time. I’m 28 years old, unmarried, and trying to build a freelance writing business from a small New York apartment. I grew up in the wake of the feminist movement, and boy am I glad about that. Gender inequalities still exist, of course (ahem). […]
When I was in junior high, my family moved to a house in the country. The dining room table sat beneath a vent designed to allow heat to rise from the main floor into my mom’s bedroom upstairs. Unfortunately the vent also served as a conduit for noise. The soft clink of metal spoons against […]
As a science journalist, I sympathize with book reviewers who wrestle with the question of whether to write negative reviews. It seems a waste of time to write about a dog of a book when there are so many other worthy ones; but readers deserve to know if Oprah is touting a real stinker. On […]
It’s been almost a year since I wrote about my genetic testing results from 23andMe. That’s because, despite paying $5 a month for the site’s mandatory Personal Genome Service®, I rarely look at it. It’s not that I’m scared of the data (been there), and not because I forgot — every six or eight weeks I get […]
One of the hardest things about being a freelance writer is seeing a great story— the kind of story you’ve always dreamed about writing—slip through your fingers. Your editors fail to see the beauty or the tragedy. No one shares your obsession; no one wants to put you on a plane to Miami or Lima […]
One day last fall I stood in the middle of the meunasah, or community meeting hall, in a remote Indonesian village trying to explain who I am and what I was doing there. A few dozen people sat on straw mats sipping bottled water and snacking on fried plantain strips, watching me expectantly. The village […]