Over the weekend, I was contacted by Melissa Townsend, an Arizona high school teacher, with this question:
Getting ready to assign spring reading to my students. What are your favorite non-fiction science books a HS kid can handle?
Continue reading “Great science books for high school students: The hive-mind speaks”
There’s nowa page in Sterling’s fall catalog for my book of science tattoos. Here’s the cover. You won’t be able to appreciate its full die-cut splendor, however, till you hold it in your hands when it comes out in October 2011. More details to come!
Originally published March 26, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Recently I blogged about how the mere existence of whales might be an important clue to treating cancer. That post has drawn many readers, and many questions in the comment thread.
Happily, the authors of the review I described–Carlo Maley of the University of California, San Francisco, and Aleah Caulin of the University of Pennsylvania–have joined the thread. They’ve answered the first set of reader questions and promise to come back to respond to the rest. Further proof of the majesty of blogs…
[Update: Here’s their next batch of answers.]
Originally published March 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
When you’re a teenager, it seems like nobody understands you. And once you’re finished being a teenager and get to observe them as an adult, you have to wonder what on Earth is going through their heads. In my new column for Discover, I gingerly step into the teenage mind, exploring what neuroscientists are learning about how their brains work. Teenagers may do things that seem crazy and/or stupid, but that doesn’t mean they themselves are crazy or stupid. The teen years turn out to be a unique phase of mental life, when we tally up the rewards and costs of our choices with a kind of math that you won’t find in the heads of children or grownups.Check it out.
Originally published March 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, March 24, 2011
Teenagers are a puzzle, and not just to their parents. When kids pass from childhood to adolescence their mortality rate doubles, despite the fact that teenagers are stronger and faster than children as well as more resistant to disease. Parents and scientists alike abound with explanations. It is tempting to put it down to plain stupidity: Teenagers have not yet learned how to make good choices. But that is simply not true. Psychologists have found that teenagers are about as adept as adults at recognizing the risks of dangerous behavior. Something else is at work.