If you follow this blog closely, you know I have a strong opinion on the use of new media platforms for science communication. Well, in the most recent Biological Bulletin, I delve into exactly why I feel scientists need to take charge and embrace these tools. The best part: the full version is FREE, so [...]

Growing up, I was one of those lucky kids who wasn’t allergic to anything. I felt like I was invincible – while my friends were pestered by pollen or peanuts, I was able to eat and play with reckless abandon. Childhoods like mine, however, are becoming more and more scarce. A recent study found that [...]

Here at Science Sushi, I often talk about the great work being done by other scientists, but I rarely turn the focus around and talk about my life as a scientist. This is a shame because I really love my job. So, starting today I’m going to try and take you out in the fiels [...]

Can you imagine oceans without sharks? We may soon have to, as new research suggests may already be 90% of the way there. Studying shark populations can be tricky. As David Shiffman explains well, while there are a number of methods that can be used to study shark populations, quantifying just how far their numbers [...]

Two years ago, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform led to the spilling of almost five million barrels of oil in just a handful of months. I wrote the following post in June of that year, two months after the spill began. Even now, we still don’t really know how much of an [...]

Cardiovascular disease is the world’s leading cause of death. Approximately every 25 seconds, an American has a heart attack. One of the vessels to the heart gets blocked, cutting off blood flow to part of the heart. Then, the starving tissue begins to die, causing pain in the chest and difficulty breathing and, eventually, death. [...]

Weighing in at only 40 grams, brown mouse lemurs are one of the smallest species of primate in the world. Their diminutive size as well as their nocturnal, tree-dwelling lifestyle makes them difficult to track and observe. It would have been completely understandable if Sarah Zohdy, a graduate student at the University of Helsinki, had [...]

Roughly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. As I stand on a beach in Hawaii and look out over the vast, blue expanse in front of me, I am overwhelmed by the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. My brain wrestles with numbers far beyond its capacity to visualize. In that moment, it [...]

“He caresses every bottle like it’s the first one he’s had, saying it ain’t love, but it ain’t bad.” – Ani DiFranco Rejection stinks. It literally hurts. But worse, it has an immediate and negative impact on our brains, producing withdrawal symptoms as if we’re quitting a serious addiction cold turkey. It’s no wonder, then, [...]

Upon first glance, hydra seem like remarkably simple creatures. The basic description of a hydra would be a tube closed at one end with tentacles surrounding a mouth on the other, made of fragile tissue that can be as slim as two cells thick. No gills, no heart, no brain, no eyes – of course, [...]