Okay, love is too strong a strong word. I’ve never quite gotten over the smell of paper and the comforting heft of a much-loved tome, but I’m not quite the reluctant adopter I was a year ago. Still, it seems I’m not alone in making this shift: According to a report from the Pew research [...]

Does your local library offer e-books for loan? It might. But if you aren’t sure, you aren’t alone: According to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 12% of e-book readers have actually borrowed an e-book from their local library. Why the low percentage given the popularity* of digital readers? The likely [...]

Yesterday: I submitted an NSF CAREER proposal on the reproductive ecology and life history of peri-menarcheal girls I submitted a manuscript on transvaginal ultrasounds and stress to a gynecology journal, and I submitted an IRB (Human Subjects Committee) proposal. Since I may never be that productive in a single day ever again, I figured I [...]

This September, cigarette packs in the U.S. will be getting a lot more colorful. And a lot more disturbing. By then, tobacco companies will be required to display one of nine graphic health warnings on each pack, to comply with the Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The U.S. has followed dozens of other countries in [...]

Chinese dyslexia may be much more complex than the English variety, according to a new paper published online today in Current Biology. English speakers who have developmental dyslexia usually don’t have trouble recognizing letters visually, but rather just have a hard time connecting them to their sounds. What about languages based on full-word characters rather [...]

In Tyson Schoeber’s class at Nootka Elementary School in Vancouver, 15 fourth through seventh graders struggle to read, write or do math at a level near that of their peers in other classes. Ten-year-olds have entered Schoeber’s program, called THRIVE, virtually unable to read independently (see “One Man’s Mission to Save Struggling Students”). Yet Schoeber [...]

I received my masters degree in 2009. After a loooong review process, the research that I conducted for my masters thesis – my first first-author publication – is finally published and online! Before beginning the research I’m currently doing, I started grad school conducting MRI research of reading and dyslexia. In this study, I established [...]

Some kids more readily recognize Ronald McDonald than the President of the United States of America. Sad, right? Check out this exchange, from the 2004 movie Super Size Me: Morgan Spurlock: [to kids] I’m gonna show you some pictures and I want you to tell me who they are. Children: OK. Morgan Spurlock: [Showing a [...]