Phoenix is scorching in the summer, and Pat Elliott had been standing for hours. So she wasn’t alarmed one August day in 2009 to find her feet swollen. “It must be the weather,” Elliott thought. But they also ached. The pain was horrendous. So she called her doctor, and he told her to come in. […]
Miscellaneous
150 million years ago in what is now the North American West, mighty diplodocus thundered across the terrain, stripping leaves from branches with its peg-like teeth and lashing away pests and predators with the 80-some vertebrae of its whip-like tail. They were magnificent creatures, as long as three school buses each. And for nearly a […]
In my early twenties, I had a really good break-up with someone whom I considered to be part of my chosen family. “Amicable” doesn’t even capture the “Friends forever!” commitment with which we launched into our post-couple bond. The thought of him having a new girlfriend made me excited for him: Nobody had told us […]
January 7 -11 Erik wonders if canaries have musical taste. Guest poster Roberta Kwok tells the story of unusual evidence from a heartbreaking crime scene. Nausea — hyperemesis in particular — is a lot more interesting than you think it is, Michelle finds. Guest poster Erin Gettler demonstrates that there’s no shortage of wild things […]
I have this theory. It’s not rocket science (which, by the way, rocket scientists tell me ain’t exactly brain surgery) and it’s not brain surgery (which brain surgeons tell me ain’t exactly rocket science). It goes like this: décor in your office is a reflection of your inner science nerd. You see, far more than […]
31 December – 4 January Well, I guess we made it through 2012 without dying. So, drink up and get back to work. Heather wrote about the strange therapeutic, cultural, and linguistic history of the tattoo. Guest poster Emily Underwood examined a part of the body so complicated that it requires 10,000 processors to simulate. […]
Water level rises, a river is fuller and fuller, until it’s something else, and the world is transformed. It’s a threshold effect: when quantitative sliding becomes qualitative step change. I’m lucky that on this map, my house falls in the light-blue rim of the darker floodplain, protected by a high-walled canal. I’ll only get washed away […]
For the holiday season we here at LWON are giving ourselves the gift of confronting our fears. We are writing about our most daunting science-related subjects and why they scare us. The advice came to me within the first few months of starting as a science writer: always be on the lookout for good math stories, […]
