Science

Science at Forbes.com:

• Tales from the Vaccine Vault: 30 Facts about Smallpox and the Coronavirus. Together the facts tell a “then and now” story about how difficult it is to eradicate a disease, how vaccines work, and how devastating a virus left unchecked can be.
• Monogamy in New World Monkeys … And in Humans. A species of New World monkeys seems to have found a tidy solution to the infidelity “problem” that many mammals face.
• A Scientist’s Bakers Yeast Showed How Quickly Evolution Can Happen. At first glance a dish of baker’s yeast in 2020 has little to do with starving pregnant women in Holland in the winter of 1944-1945. 
• Do Animals Know Mother Love? Darwin assumed that emotions like mother love are available to at least some animals.
• Dear Enemies’ Are Made when a Song Sparrow Learns to Sing. For for males of the species, the teaching and the learning can make the wheel spin a little longer.
• Do Male Brown Spiders Prefer a Little Death with Their Sex? What would Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin say about the erotic lives of male spiders?
• So Long “Homo Stupidus.” Hello, Intelligent, Compassionate, Neanderthals? Studies illuminating what it may have been like to be a Neanderthal child have helped upend the idea of Neanderthals as brutish, sub-human, and lacking the “right” cognitive stuff.
• Partial Deafness Helps African Naked Mole-Rats Hear At All. Every naked mole-rat is nearly deaf. Scientists have searched for a survival function to the impairment.
• Researchers Just Found That Antibody Levels Decline Soon After Coronavirus Symptoms End. The good news is that your immune system has a memory.
• A New Genus And Species Of Dinosaur From The Gobi Desert. Skeletons and partial relics of oviraptoridae that had two-toed forelimbs were discovered in Mongolia.
• Facial Recognition Development in Wasps Hints at a Mystery of Human Evolution. Scientists have long wondered how prehistoric humans quickly unstuck themselves from the Stone Age and rapidly became as intellectually and socially capable as modern humans. Recent discoveries about wasps may hold a clue.
• Scientists Just Learned a Way to Treat Down Syndrome Prenatally — in Mice. For humans, a drug made from a plant compound that has anti-inflammatory properties represents a possibility for prenatal treatments that are personalized to meet the needs and metabolisms of individual babies.
• Zombie Wildfires and Other Science Zombies to Scare the Daylights Out of You. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Scientific American Samples:

• Bison versus Mammoths: New Culprit in the Disappearance of North America’s Giants. A scientist turns up new clues to the disappearance of North America’s giant beavers, saber-toothed cats and other large mammals.
• Outsmarting Dengue Fever. Why one scientist is vaccinating mosquitoes, not patients.
• Corals in Lust. Why they spawn only at twilight, and only a few times a year.
• Beauty and the Beasts. The sight of a pretty woman brings out the war monger in men.

Discover Magazine Samples:

• Hiking Las Vegas. Just a few miles from the perfectly enclosed, artificial worlds of the Strip’s casinos, there lie some beautiful and accessible spectacles of nature.
• Winemaking: Science, Nature, and Fancy Footwork. Each glass tells you something about the wine’s milieu as well as the vintner’s approach.
• A host of articles including many “20 Things You Didn’t Know about…” ones, for Discover Magazine. (Page upon page. Just keep clicking.)

Other National Magazine Science Samples:

• Darwin in Love. Charles Darwin, who of all people should have known better, married his first cousin. Did his love for Emma color his later works? (JSTOR Daily)
• The Brain Science Behind Conspiracy Theories. It might not be a lack of intelligence that leads many to believe wild—and wildly inaccurate—information, but instead our mind’s way of protecting us from feelings of isolation and despair. (DAME Magazine)

Science-Based Op-Eds and Think Pieces:

• Barrett Says Judges Can Avoid Beliefs Coloring Judicial Rulings; Social Scientists Say It’s Challenging (Forbes.com)
• Why People Believe Genuinely Fake News  (DAME Magazine)
• Trump Can’t Control Himself (NY Daily News)
• All the President’s White Women (NY Daily News)
• Actually, Truth Isn’t Truth (NY Daily News)
• What Would Sigmund Freud Say about Gay Conversion Therapy? (Seattle Times)
• The Supreme Court Meets Sigmund Freud (Chicago Tribune)

Psychology Today Column Samples:

• The Human Animal. Our animal nature is undeniable. Is beastly behavior inevitable?
• Intimacy Across Cultures—and Species. Do rats and pigmy chimps dream of electric kisses?
• The Naked Truth about The Wives of Tall Men. Are they really happier?
• Mean vs. Kind Humor. Louis C. K., the Dobie Gillis show, and borderline personality.
• Tough Love for Dog Lovers. New research shows he (or she) is just not that into you.
• Why Don’t Women Leave Batterers?. Knocks to the head may diminish them so much that they can’t.
• Is America Safer When Good Guys Have Guns?. Homicide data + Crime Victimization Survey Results = Surprise

Video:

• For Beck and Branch, Rebecca produced the Science Bits series.