My story in the May 2017 issue of Scientific American explores the evolution of bird nest shape. Most researchers believed that the common cup style, like the kind robins build under your porch eaves, evolved first, followed by the more complex and time-consuming roofed style. But one team of scientists has found that it happened the …
Read more “New Article: Bird Ancestors Built Nests Like Defensive Forts”
I wrote a blog post for Scientific American’s Observations blog about a video that shows how scientific inventions over the past two millennia led to the population explosion we have today. On a digital map of the world, the video adds a yellow dot every time another million people are added to the Earth. The dots …
Read more “Population Animation: Video asks, ‘Can Earth handle all of us?’”
My latest story, “250-Year-Old Eyewitness Accounts of Icier Arctic Attest to Loss of Sea Ice,” has just been posted on Scientific American‘s website. This marks my debut for the nation’s most prestigious science magazine! My story looks at ARCdoc, the research project based at the University of Sunderland, that data-mined old ships’ logbooks for weather …
Read more “New Article on ScientificAmerican.com: Whaling logbooks reveal clues to climate change”