“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”…
Note from the author: I’ve always been interested in philosophy and have wanted to try and merge my philosophical readings with science writing for a while. The bold title gets its inspiration from an influential essay (Existentialism is a Humanism) by Jean Paul Sartre, which states, among other things, that individuals are responsible for themselves…
Originally posted by MiSciWriters. Header image by Sierra Nishizaki. Scattered around your house or apartment, lightly coating the surface of your coffee table and lurking in the nooks and crannies of each room, discarded layers of yourself can be found in the form of skin and hair cells. Regardless of how much of clean-freak you are, it’s unlikely…
This article, continuing from my previous one about snails, was inspired by a guest lecture for the Life Science Institute at the University of Michigan by Dr. Baldomero Olivera of University of Utah. Header image is of Conus furvus, a snail-hunting cone snail from Olango Island, Cebu, collected by fishermen in shallow water. In the warm…
Originally published on Hektoen International’s Journal of Medical Humanities. Submitted to their summer essay contest. On a warm spring day in Denmark in 1950 two brothers, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard, ventured out into the marshlands to gather peat to make fuel. With hefty sharp spades, they cut out earthen bricks of decayed organic matter to…
Originally posted by the Life Science Institue. Robert Hooke published the first known observation of cells in the mid-1600s, describing a cork tree sample as “perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb.” Since this observation, this smallest unit of life has been extensively studied, from its role in metabolism to mental activity, having a fundamental…
Minimalistic living and the tiny house movement reject spacious dwellings in favor of efficient homes. Typically, these petite houses can be small enough to be towed around in nomadic fashion. While it can be aesthetically and economically appealing, what is it like actually carrying an entire house with you everywhere? Snails, and other members of…
This article was written during the 3rd annual RNA Symposium: Advancing RNA Bioscience into Medicine. I wrote others for this event, but this one’s my favorite. Check out MiSciWriters to read other posts that were live blogged! Suppose you have some extremely important information in the form of a blueprint and it’s your job to…
There’s more to our genetics than what’s within our DNA code. Though the code itself the basis for life, on its surface there are chemical alterations that change how it’s expressed. Because DNA’s structure is that of a helix, modifications either make it coil up or unwind where the unwound form allows for transcription. Epigenetics…
After you get home from work, perhaps after eating dinner, you may start working on other projects that you have, something that you might call a hobby. Humans aren’t the only ones that have a life after hours. Recently it’s been discovered that many proteins also have roles in the cell outside of their main…
