SEA-Worthy

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is known for the grants it gives to researchers who are trying to crack the most difficult biomedical puzzles. But it also focuses on giving science students a boost. One of the programs getting a lot of attention these days is their Science Education Alliance (SEA), which is promoting real research for undergraduate students in their very first year.

Thanks to a two-semester course where students isolate and annotate the DNA of a particular type of bacteriophage linked to tuberculosis, students are doing novel, publishable research years before many assumed they would be ready. Instead of reading textbooks and listening to lectures, they’re finding out what real science is—and often deciding to pursue science majors and careers as a result.

Read more here.

Shooting Star

A few months ago, I was asked to profile a 40-year-old player WNBA player, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, for St. Edward’s University alumni magazine. It’s impressive enough that she can compete with players half her age these days, but the more remarkable story is how she managed to play record-setting college ball and earn a degree at SEU while raising a toddler. This year, she capped off a great season with the Lynx witha World Championship. McWilliams-Franklin’s life has more amazing twists than a dime store detective novel, and until she writes her autobiography, you can get a glimpse of her remarkable life here.

A Buffet of Health Stories

Almost every month, I write a slew of short health pieces for Experience Life. This month, I tackled the effect of long commutes on marriages (rotten), the long-term results of liposuction (rotten), the effect of short writing exercises before big tests (amazing), and the dangers of certain types of honey. You can pick up the magazine to read all the stories, or just click here to read the honey piece. Regardless, I’d add this whole issue to your “to read” list. It’s an especially good one.

Read more here.

A Sleigh Full of Deals

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, credit cards are a staple of the holiday shopping season. And if you’re someone who pays off your balance every month, November and December are the best months to take advantage of all of your cards’ benefits. Card issuers and companies roll out tons of great deals during the holidays—contests, discounts, bonuses—that they hope will encourage you to choose their card over a competitor’s. I wrote a monster story for CreditCards.coms, along with an accompanying chart, that outlines the various promotions that are being offered this season.

Read about it here and here.

The Good Things About Public Education

The documentary Waiting for Superman made it clear that public education in America is in dire need of an overhaul. And it made plenty of parents wonder if they were doing right by their kids by sending them to public schools. But this story I did for Mount Holyoke College examines the many bright spots that exist in public education today. It’s not just individual teachers (though there are plenty), but remarkable school-wide programs, funding initiatives, and innovative ideas. Public education may not be perfect everywhere, but there are many great things still going on in schools every single day.

Read more here.

A Little Bit Healthier

The problem with the avalanche of new health data that comes out every day — new studies, new stats, new theories — is that it’s hard to sift through everything and find the stuff that’s most relevant and applicable to your life. But Experience Life magazine is doing just that. For their November issue, I tackled studies that show that new moms eat lots more than their non-mom counterparts, new data on the power of Epsom salts for athletic recovery, and the dangers of over whitening your teeth with over-the-counter whitening strips.

The story isn’t online, but you can check out the magazine at your nearest newsstand.

Life Decisions

Life insurance isn’t the most exciting financial product, but most families need it. In this story for AAA Living, I tackled some of the common reasons people choose not to get it  – and whether or not those decisions could have long-term consequences.

The interactive graphic itself is pretty neat — check it out here.

How To Save A Life

It’s not hard to give lip-service to programs and people who work against domestic violence. Too often, that’s as far as it goes. But Amy Lorenz-Moser has dug deep into these issues as a lawyer, and her pro bono work focuses on women who have been jailed for life for killing their abusive spouses or partners.

There’s no question it’s ethically murky territory, but Lorenz-Moser makes a compelling case that some of these women, fearing for their own lives, killed their partners because they saw few other options if they wanted to survive. The cases she takes on are heartbreaking, but expose complicated stories that require thoughtful, nuanced solutions. In this story for Webster World, she talks about what inspired her work and how she stays focused on cases that can take years to resolve.

Read more here

Corps Work

Plenty of people go to college with the vague idea that they want to ‘save the world.’ By the time they graduate, many have settled on more practical dreams: a job, graduate school, or maybe a bit of traveling. But there are still a sizable minority who still want to make a difference, and they often get their start in the Peace Corps.

For this story for the Carleton College Voice, I talked to five decades of Carls who had gone to the Peace Corps. For some, it played a small but critical role in their future work—for others, it was a calling. One shared a telephone with an entire village; another poured much of his $1,000 annual stipend into a challenging plan to get a science fair off the ground.  None of them called it easy, but all of them reframed their understanding of the world as a result.

Read all of their stories here.

Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away

More than one person has pointed out that the best camera is the one you have with you. For most of us these days, the camera we have with us is on our cell phone. And these tiny cameras are actually pretty good: plenty of megapixels, dozens of filters, and any number of ways to share our snaps with friends. The downside is that some truly remarkable film, Kodachrome, ended up in the metaphorical dustbin. Long the preferred film of photographers shooting for beautiful magazines like National Geographic, it was replaced by digital cameras with more flexibility.

The final batches of Kodachrome were processed months ago, and a small group of Webster University students, faculty, and alumni got to be a part of that history. They dug up about 100 rolls of Kodachrome and spent a summer shooting it—even though some had expired in the 1980s. The results were remarkable. In this story, you can read about their experience—and check out some of the final shots.

Read more here.