Science writing
Poets in White Coats
By Rob Mitchum When a doctor pulls a notepad out of his or her white coat, you might expect them to be writing down a drug prescription. But a recently completed contest thrown by the Prizker School of Medicine suggests that physician might be scrawling down a few lines of verse as well. The first […]
When Art and Science Meet Halfway
by Rob Mitchum Too often, art and science are treated as intellectual adversaries. Educational systems typically route students toward one pole or the other, with the artistic and scientific spheres rarely intersecting by the time one reaches the undergraduate and graduate levels. But for the last two years, the University of Chicago has paved a […]
Rewriting the Book on the Brain
Students might sometimes think that their textbook appeared out of thin air, the accumulated knowledge of a field spontaneously forming into a heavy slab of facts and figures. But textbooks are like any other type of book, with flesh-and-blood authors who labor over the words within and make a million tiny decisions to shape the […]
Linkage 7/8: Eyes on the Prizes and More
At 1:30 pm, on Monday, December 12, at its Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, The American Society of Hematology will recognize Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago Medical Center, and Brian Druker of Oregon Health & Science University, with the 2011 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize for their significant advances in the […]
Linkage 3/18: Match Day, Podcast #0.3, and More
Yesterday wasn’t just St. Patrick’s Day for fourth-year medical students around the country – it was also Match Day, the tense and celebratory day when aspiring doctors learn the residency program where they will spend their next 3-7 years. At the Pritzker School of Medicine, green-clad students and supporters absolutely packed the hospital’s Billings Auditorium […]
Linkage 1/21: Science Online, Kinect Surgery, & More
Last weekend, I was one of the fortunate 300 who gathered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina for the 2011 edition of Science Online. The simplest way to describe Science Online is as a science blogging conference, but the real topic on the table was the broad future of science communication, be it through blogs, […]
Linkage 12/10: Imagination Dieting, Arsenic Update, Cold Hands
Imagine There’s No Hunger This post is going up around lunchtime, and you might be just now picturing what you’re going to eat. There are those healthy whole-wheat pasta leftovers in the fridge, but just down the street is a deli where you can purchase a giant Italian sub with hot peppers and cheese and […]
Life on Arsenic?
By now, you’ve probably heard about the “alien” arsenic bacteria discovered in a California lake…and if you’ve been following the story closely, you might have a neck ache from all the twists and turns. When word of a NASA press conference on “astrobiology” broke last week, many hoped that the first evidence of extraterrestrial life […]
Linkage 10/8: The Nobels, ADHD, and Spoofs
This past week has been Nobel Prize week, and while none of the winners so far have had a University of Chicago connection (unlike last year’s trio), it’s still good fun for science spectators. Trying to divine a common theme from all of a year’s winners is probably futile – the selection process at the […]
Linkage 8/27: Chronic Fatigue & Oil Spill Messiness
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is known as a “diagnosis of exclusion,” a disease with non-specific symptoms that can only be considered when all other reasonable diseases have been ruled out. Because there are no known proven causes of CFS, it’s impossible to design a test for the disease, and there is no defined treatment strategy. […]
