Electronic cigarettes just blowing smoke?

A new study has determined that the use of electronic cigarettes does not correlate to smoking cessation. In the longitudinal study, researchers analyzed data from 949 American smokers and concluded that e-cigarette users were not more likely to quit or reduce smoking, when compared to non-users. E-cigarettes have been widely promoted as effective tools for helping smokers … Read more

“You, me, everyone-we are made of star stuff”- A look at Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Through a peculiar collaboration between Seth MacFarlane, creator of the notoriously controversial, nonsensical, yet widely popular TV shows, Family Guy and American Dad, and Ann Druyan, wife of one of the most prominent science communicators of the 20th century, the late Carl Sagan, with whom she co-wrote the immensely popular PBS documentary Cosmos, comes Cosmos: A … Read more

An App for Every Malady

We have all heard of smartphone applications for losing weight, or calculating the calories we burn in a day, or checking the nutritional value of  the food we eat. Interestingly, it turns out that numerous apps for tackling even bigger problems  continue to be developed. These include asthma, diabetes, seizures, heart disease, and hepatitis. Following … Read more

The Red Nessie: My visit to Janelia Farms

After following directions like “right on Helix drive, then right on Scientific lane,” one can surely expect to arrive at a scientific paradise. Stashed away in almost the countryside of Virginia like a well-kept secret, Janelia Farms, a campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is indeed a paradise for science. Entering the guarded premise evokes a … Read more

Tenderness: A Beautiful Description of a Scientist

I first crossed paths with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee as a PhD student at the Johns Hopkins University in 2012, where he had come to talk about his highly acclaimed, Pulitzer prize-winning book, The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. It was a rather big auditorium, but proved to be to quite small for the sea of admiring students and faculty … Read more

Mean girls (and boys) and biology

A new study by researchers at University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Minnesota, school of management, shows that during the week of their ovulation, women subconsciously become more competitive about their socio-economic standing in comparison to other women, and are less likely to help them. “They become meaner to other women”, says … Read more