By Nikki Saint Bautista
Two things that you will find in every culture are tea and alcoholic beverages, but drinking plenty of tea has been known to reduce cancer, whereas the opposite is true for alcohol. Water was purified for consumption either by boiling it or fermenting the juice from squeezed fruits. However, the British Medical Journal published a study yesterday, which claims that drinking scalding hot (70° Celsius or 150° Fahrenheit) liquids may lead to a higher risk in esophageal cancer.
Epidemiologist  Nick Day, who was one of the first leaders …

By Talia Page
Ask any non-New Yorker what comes to mind when they think of New York City, and you’ll likely get one of three responses: Wall Street, Broadway, or the Statue of Liberty. These cover important aspects of the city: money, theater/art, and the promise of freedom. But what about science?
In 2004 Mayor Bloomberg and Andrew Alper, President of the Economic Development Corporation, unveiled a plan for a commercial science center in a city-owned chunk area of Kips Bay that would attract the world’s top scientists. If successful, the …

By Ted Kinsman
Recently I was asked to photograph a large number of microscopic organisms in the modern HDTV format. It has been at least ten years since I photographed many of these species, so it was nice to return with modern cameras and see what I could do. The Vovlox is a favorite of students,

looking like a geodesic dome with replicas of itself in side; it is really a form of algae. When students first look at microscopic algae they think it will just be stationary but the opposite is …

The recent Sensation to Emotion Conference was packed with scholars and clinicians with an interest in advancing the understanding of how sensory processing and emotion regulation interact, and how these processes affect human behavior. In interviewed Dr. Jennifer Brout, the mother of fourteen-year-old triplets, a clinical/child psychologist, and the founder of the EMB Brout Sensory Processing and Emotion Regulation Program at Duke University. Dr. Brout is also involved with projects at the SPD Foundation (the leading authority on Sensory Processing Disorders), Cal State University Fullerton, and The …

My five-year old son Alexander and I have tried to get into the habit of doing one science experiment each weekend. But last weekend, faced with plenty of time on our hands and a couple of Spring days that were sunny but really cold, we decided to stay inside and do four experiments. Like science itself, they took a bunch of different forms.
The first experiment came from the book One Minute Mysteries: 65 Short Mysteries You Solve With Science. I read a riddle to Alex that essentially asked if you …

By Caitlin Militello
It’s no secret that the U.S. has fallen behind other countries when it comes to education. President Obama, speaking about his new plan for educational reform on March 10th, stated that “despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us.”  Why has this trend of educational decay continued for so long?  The answer just might be an issue of attitude, and science education is a perfect representative of that.
The …

To view Naturally Obsessed is to be extremely engrossed. This new documentary by Sloan-Kettering Institute Chairman Emeritus Dr. Richard Rifkind and his wife activist Carole Rifkind invites audiences into the molecular biology lab of Dr. Larry Shapiro of Columbia University’s medical school. Here’s the link to the film’s site.
We meet three graduate students and experience their day-to-day travails and triumphs as they try to isolate proteins and try to determine their structures. The most senior grad student is Robert Townley, who has already hit a scientific roadblock at a previous …

By Susan Scheuer
The Rock-it Science concert, an event held in conjunction with the Sensation and Emotion Network that took place under pink, blue and yellow strobe lights at the Highline Ballroom on Tuesday, March 3rd, gave neuroscientists, geneticists, and PhD students in Systems Biology, among others, the chance to “get down.” Four of the rock bands in the long line-up of performers featured well-known scientists who, in the words of music producer Tim Sommer, “pursue music on a level that’s a little higher than that of a hobby.” It was …

By Ben Lillie
Recently I attended the opening of The Atom Smashers, a documentary by
Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross from 137 Films. It was held,
appropriately, at the Museum of Science and Industry. Unfortunately,
this had the effect of providing us with what is probably the smallest
screen in the city of Chicago. That can easily be forgiven because the
film itself was exceptional.
In blurb form, The Atom Smashers is about scientists at the Tevatron,
a 4 mile diameter machine hosted at Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory (Fermilab) in the suburbs of Chicago and currently the
worlds largest …

By DNLee
This month marks the end of a two year journey of exploration, discovery, wonder, and advocacy. March 31st marks the end of International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009.
In fact, Wednesday, March 18, 2009 is International Polar Day, celebrating Polar Oceans. The marine ecosystem is a very important part of the polar biome. The animals of the polar regions – both the north and south poles – depend on a variety of seafood species for nutrition: krill, fish, ocean birds, and ocean mammals. The polar food webs are complex and interesting. …