Viral Mutation for the Perplexed
Imagine a game of Telephone, where a phrase or sentence or short story is passed, one person to another, until the last person is reached. They then say what they’ve...
Teaching Pandemics Syllabus
...disproportionately deadly among people of color. Long-term environmental racism could be a major factor in this disparity. What’s Behind the Very Real Butch Quarantine Hair Crisis? Liz Tracey April 25,...
There’s a Mascot for That? Cute COVID-19 Education
In Japan, there are many mascots for many things. They are yuru-kyara (or yuru-chara), “loose” or “wobbly characters,” rooted in and evolved from traditional religious deities, and now ubiquitous in...
Dogs and Cancer
Cancer, at its simplest, begins with DNA mutations that cause uncontrolled replication of abnormal cells, resulting in tumors and illness. There is no single “cancer”: each is dependent on the...
We Have All the Cute Animal Posts
...in life itself. Behavior Stuck in the Midden with You Liz Tracey January 5, 2020 A midden is, among other things, a refuse site outside an octopus' home. (Release the...
Sheep Snarf Seaweed at the Scottish Seashore
When many non-Scots think of Scotland, they envision it as once populated by angry blue-painted men in kilts who fought off the Romans and warred with the English to their...
Upside-Down Jellyfish and the Mucus of Death
Jellyfish are a bane to ocean swimmers—the sight of a single small gelatinous mass can make them think the water is filled with stinging crowds of non-sentient Jell-O, and that...
Biomimicry Comes for the Noble Hedgehog
If you had no idea what a hedgehog is, you might read Pliny the Elder’s description and mistake it as fact: They catch apples with their quills, can predict the...
The “Doctress” Was In: Rebecca Lee Crumpler
On March 9, 125 years ago, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler passed away at the age of sixty-four. As the first Black woman physician in the United States, she had served...
The Chemist Whose Work Was Stolen from Her
Alice Augusta Ball was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1894, the child of a middle-class family in which both parents and a grandfather were photographers. At the time, developing and...