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Journalism & Essays

as a freelancer & a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at KQED

STAT •

This scientist is revealing the immune system in our nasal passages

Sydney Ramirez vividly remembers that Wednesday in March. Her future adviser, scientist Shane Crotty, was supposed to be in Italy for a conference. And Ramirez, a physician and immunologist, wasn’t supposed to join Crotty’s lab at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology as a postdoctoral fellow until July.


But it was 2020, and very little was going as planned.Instead, they were in Crotty’s office, and Covid-19 had just been declared a national emergency; in two days, the institute would shut do...
The New York Times •

How to Treat and Prevent Shin Splints

It’s fall marathon season, which for many runners means it’s also shin splints season. Whether you’re a beginner or have several races under your belt, the injury can be debilitating.Shin splints manifest as pain along the tibia or shin bone, and they are among the most common running injuries. Most people get them if they’re new to the sport or after ramping up their mileage. But you can also get shin splints if you incorporate hills or speed workouts without building up to them first, or by ru...
Science •

New books from outer space, future Earth, and close to home

Undergraduate research can be a slog of glassware washing, safety training, navigating academic hierarchies, and putting in long hours in the lab. On good days, however, it can also be a taste of what it is like to discover something new. Notes on Infinity, Austin Taylor’s debut novel, tells the fictional story of two Harvard undergraduates who forge an enduring partnership after meeting in an organic chemistry class.
STAT •

Being a patient can be a full-time job. This ICU nurse wants to make it easier

Michael Anne Kyle had just begun her Ph.D. in health policy and management at Harvard Business School when her friends started complaining about the health care system.


Many of them were having children for the first time, and they’d never been to the doctor so much in their lives. They’d text Kyle, who is also an ICU nurse, with gripes. “I missed a whole day of work for a ten-minute visit,” they’d say, or, “I spent all this time on hold. Is this normal?” Once she started asking, it seemed e...
STAT •

One doctor's quest to help people with hearing loss enjoy 'all the richness' of music

As a child in Jacksonville, Fla., Alex Chern built string instruments out of office supplies and tuned them, stretching rubber bands taut to change their pitch. Starting at age 7, he took violin lessons and continued playing all the way through college at Yale University. He loved playing Beethoven, expressive pieces written in F major like “Romance No. 2” or the “Spring Sonata,” and technically challenging pieces like Bach’s “Sonatas and Partitas,” where chords left a violinist no room for erro...
WBUR •

'How perfect this is / How lucky we are': Stories from 266 benches along the Esplanade

I’d always thought that moving to Boston would be like coming home. Chicago, where I’d spent the previous six years in grad school, had felt overlarge and wide, like a borrowed coat that had warmed to my shape but never really fit. I’d come to love my neighborhood, even the winters, but the city’s sprawling streets never really felt like mine. Boston, by contrast, was as dense as the New England I’d known as a child, the highway leading to it forest-lined and familiar. I’d looked forward to movi...
STAT •

Older adults are vulnerable in a warming climate. Better buildings could help protect them

In 2003, during Europe’s worst heat wave in centuries, almost 15,000 people died in France. About three-quarters of those deaths occurred indoors, and approximately 80% of the people who died were over 75, an age at which people tend to be less capable of perceiving heat and less well-equipped to adapt to it.

In the coming years of mounting climate change, people around the world — particularly older adults — are expected to be similarly vulnerable. But though scientists know a lot about heat,...
STAT •

Sporting night vision goggles, a scientist probes the internal clocks that help parasites infect people

In the 1700s, French astronomer Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan noticed that the leaves of the mimosa plant opened towards the sun and closed at dusk. His discovery was in keeping with thousands of years of observations. But de Mairan also found that the plant followed the same rhythm even in the constant darkness of a cupboard, suggesting that some innate metronome kept the plant in sync with the rotation of the earth. Centuries later, scientists now know this to be a circadian rhythm, a 24-hou...
Undark Magazine •

In Bolivia, a Model for Indigenous Groups Grappling With Covid-19

The Beni Department, one of nine political regions in Bolivia, lies in the northern part of the country, where the Andes meet tropical forest and Amazon tributaries weave across hot, humid lowlands. It is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Blue-throated macaws flit across the sky and dawn rises misty and pink above rivers teeming with fish.

For nearly two decades, Hillard Kaplan, a professor of health economics and anthropology at Chapman University in California, and Michael G...
KQED •

“Wakefulness” part of the brain attacked first in Alzheimer’s, study says

People who donate their bodies to science might never have dreamed what information lies deep within their brains.
Even when that information has to do with sleep.
Scientists used to believe that people who napped a lot were at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. But Lea Grinberg with the UCSF Memory and Aging Center started to wonder if “risk” was too light a term — what if, instead, napping indicated an early stage of Alzheimer’s?
About a decade ago, Grinberg — a neuropathologist and asso...
KQED •

Fear of human voices can shape an ecosystem

In the mountains near Santa Cruz, there’s an area where nature’s rules don’t seem to apply. Everything looks normal — there’s a stream, oak trees, redwoods, bobcats, skunks and the occasional opossum. Pacific tree frogs croak all day and into the night.
Only those who listen carefully would notice that something in this remote spot sounds unusual. Human voices have joined the mix — and they’re reading, sometimes a short story written by Paul Bowles, at other times, poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks.
Th...
KQED •

California defends wolves, argues against feds removing protections

California is pushing back on the federal government’s proposal to delist wolves from the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48 states. This step would remove wolves’ federal protections, transferring decisions about wolf management to individual states and tribes.
The proposal, announced in March, frames the wolves’ current status as “one of the greatest comebacks in conservation history.” But environmentalists and now the California Fish and Game Commission have argued that, to make a full re...
KQED •

Jumbo squid are missing from Monterey Bay. Will they ever return?

Jumbo squid live up to their name. They can grow up to six feet long and can weigh 100 pounds. They’re deep red, muscular, and just plain mean. Mexican fisherman call them diablo rojo — red devil — because they eat each other and anything they can. When the squid invaded Monterey Bay in 2002, they devoured over 50 kinds of fish.
After eight years of feasting, the jumbo squid suddenly disappeared; they haven’t come back to Monterey. With the proper bait and skill, jumbo squid are usually so vorac...
KQED •

VIDEO: Three new wolf pups sighted in Northeast California

California’s only known wolf pack has at least three new pups, according to a report by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Trail cameras in Lassen County recorded the pups, as well as two or three adult wolves, in June.
Grey wolves first came to California in this century. On December 28, 2011, a single grey wolf with a radio collar crossed the Oregon/California border into California history. Named OR-7, the wolf was the first confirmed grey wolf in the state since 1924, when the last k...
KQED •

Removing invasive shrimp may clear Lake Tahoe's waters

Removing a species of tiny shrimp may be the key to returning Lake Tahoe’s waters to the clear cerulean shade extolled in vacation guides.
According to the latest State of the Lake report from UC Davis scientists, the approach could restore Tahoe to what Mark Twain called “the fairest picture the whole world affords.” Halfway through a two-year pilot project, the team is even hopeful that it will preserve the lake’s clarity in a warming climate.
Researchers announced in May that clarity had impr...
KQED •

Environmental group says stop killing beavers, Trump administration says OK

The Trump administration has feuded with California over the state’s sanctuary laws, its stricter standards on tailpipe emissions, and the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the border.
But apparently there’s one dispute, involving a certain fur-bearing mammal, that the federal government apparently wants no part of.
Threatened with legal action by an environmental group, the Wildlife Services section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has agreed to stop killing beavers, at le...
KQED •

Californians' concerns about worsening wildfires at record high

A new poll reveals Californians’ considerable anxiety about the effects of climate change on the state.
A record number of California adults, 71%, said they’re very concerned about wildfires becoming more severe due to global warming, according to the survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California. That’s an increase of almost 10 percentage points over last year.
Another 15% said they’re somewhat concerned about the worsening blazes. Last November’s Camp Fire, in Butte County, was...
KQED •

Heat wave descends on East Bay hills and I-80 corridor this weekend

After a relatively mild July, a potentially dangerous heat wave is expected to descend across a vast swath of East Bay and Central California cities and towns this weekend. The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a heat advisory for the East Bay inland hills and valleys from Concord to Livermore; the I-80 corridor from Vallejo out past Sacramento into El Dorado County; and for the 450-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Redding.
Weather officials expect the heat to start up Saturday morni...
KQED •

What two sisters with a rare heart condition taught doctors about our genes

Early in February of 2008, just days after she was born, Tatiana Legkiy lay in a cardiac intensive care unit, her tiny body hooked up to a respirator. After crying for two hours, she was now briefly quiet, the tube in her throat helping her breathe but also preventing her from making any sound.
Tatiana’s heart was failing. A cardiologist, tipped off by a pediatrician who heard something strange in a routine checkup, had examined her earlier that day and grown worried. He sent Tatiana to a nearby...
KQED •

How scientists detect the most lethal shellfish toxin you've never heard of

There is a weapon that is released by algae around the world and concentrated, invisible, in the flesh of shellfish. An amount the size of a poppy seed is enough to kill a grown person.
It’s part of an onslaught from which we’ve defended ourselves for decades, which might be why you’ve never heard of it.
Saxitoxin is lethal at concentrations 1,000 times lower than is cyanide. It is a powerful neurotoxin released by plankton in algal blooms. Saxitoxin is so potent, in fact, that it was the only m...
KQED •

New forensic tool uses single hair to identify perpetrators

A new forensic technique could help identify perpetrators of sexual assault using a kind of evidence typically deemed unreliable by the scientific community: hair.
Historically, analysis of hair samples has been fraught with far more controversy than crime shows might lead someone to believe. In 2013, the FBI, responding to the exoneration of three men whose hair-based convictions did not align with DNA evidence, announced what was lauded as a “historic” and “unprecedented” partnership with the...