Exit, Pursued By Science

Friday, December 11, 2015 - 07:44

A Powerful Weapon for Battling Breast Cancer

By Hanna Starobinets

Cancer begins from a single mutation in a single cell. By the time it is a full-blown tumor, it carries hundreds of genetic and molecular alterations that allow it to grow uncontrollably outside the constraints of normal biology.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - 10:45

The Hottest (and Coldest) Trends This Thanksgiving

By Hanna Starobinets
Although it can be cooked in a separate pot, stuffing is traditionally cooked right inside the turkey, absorbing the bird’s flavorful juices and coming out moister than its stovetop counterpart.
Meat
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 11:41

The Science of Dietary Risks

By Hanna Starobinets

Red wine. Coffee. Dark chocolate. Epidemiologists, doctors, and nutrition scientists are constantly analyzing the good and bad consequences of different food and beverage components of our diets and reporting correlative data.

Friday, October 23, 2015 - 07:08

Biologically-Inspired Engineering

By Hanna Starobinets
The past few years have seen an increase in robotics inspired by the natural world. These robots are designed to look and move like animals, from flying like a bird to running and jumping like a cheetah. Aside from being intriguing engineering challenges, these types of robotics could also be used as a substitute for humans in dangerous or difficult situations.
Image of an elephant and baby elephant walking.
Thursday, October 15, 2015 - 16:18

This month in DNA repair: the elephant and the prize

By Hanna Starobinets
Increases in body size and lifespan should theoretically make an animal more prone to DNA replication errors that can produce cancer-causing mutations. African elephants, weighing up to 12,000 pounds and living up to 70 years, should be riddled with tumors, yet somehow they live long, cancer-free lives.
Friday, October 2, 2015 - 15:42

Up and Down: Mars and DNA

By Hanna Starobinets
Water on Mars! And this time, it’s liquid! Salty water flows on Mars slopes – during “warm seasons” of above 10 degrees Fahrenheit – producing streaks of hydrated minerals that NASA spotted from their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The findings were announced in a news conference on Monday, September 28, and published the same day in Nature Geoscience by Lujendra Ojha et al.
Friday, September 25, 2015 - 11:25

What Scientists Did This Summer

By Hanna Starobinets
The breast, or mammary gland, is a unique organ: it’s the only one that develops predominantly after birth – during puberty – in an organism with a fully-developed immune system. Early development trains the immune system to distinguish between “self” and “non-self” in an effort to prepare for all sorts of infectious attacks throughout life.
Thursday, May 28, 2015 - 08:51

Biomedical Science is Awesome

By Hanna Starobinets
As I sit at my lab bench, bent over an ice bucket cluttered with FACS tubes, trying to make some small discoveries of my own (and get a PhD before I’m 30?), I’m motivated by all the awesome discoveries that are helping humanity live longer and healthier lives. I’ve said before that today’s transformative technologies are driving the future toward us at a ferocious pace; I believe this is equally true of our understanding of the biology of human health and disease.
Thursday, May 14, 2015 - 08:26

Tomorrowland is Around the Corner

By Hanna Starobinets
Fabulous innovation is all around us. A typical day in 2015 would be so fundamentally unrecognizable to someone in 2000 that the phrase “I’ll snap a picture on my phone and send it to you through my watch” would probably not go down well in most social situations.
Thursday, April 30, 2015 - 08:01

The Science of Wine

By Hanna Starobinets

I don’t know all the science behind winemaking. But my favorite Sonoma winemaker, ex-professor of particle physics Dr. Chris Loxton, sure does.