Category: Science and Society

  • RockEDU’s Remote Outreach Makes Science More Accessible

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    Audrey Goldfarb Science Saturday, Rockefeller’s annual campus-wide festival of science education and exploration, is a gem of RockEDU’s community outreach. Last year, as COVID cases began to spike in New York City, RockEDU was forced to pull the plug on Science Saturday after months of hard work, meticulous planning, and anticipation. School closures and remote…

  • Who is Anthony Fauci?

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    Aileen Marshall We have all seen Dr. Anthony Fauci, currently the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), on television providing facts about the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months. It was a long road to this critical position, but Fauci’s path may be somewhat familiar to many people here in the…

  • Murder Hornets, What’s in a Name?

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    Aileen Marshall With so many more significant stories in the news recently, you may have only vaguely noticed stories about murder hornets. Is this yet another thing we should worry about? It turns out, not as much as the name would imply. While they might look very frightening, they aren’t going around killing people. However,…

  • What It’s Like to Get a COVID-19 Antibody Test in NYC

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    Anna Amelianchik Antibody testing for COVID-19 is now widely available in New York City. Unlike the polymerase chain reaction test used to detect coronavirus from the infamous nasal and throat swab, the antibody test does not determine whether you currently have the disease. Instead, it can detect antibodies against COVID-19 present in blood and determine…

  • What Happened in 1918?

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    Aileen Marshall Not many of us around the Tri-Institutional community have experienced a pandemic situation like COVID-19. News pundits and politicians are saying this is “unprecedented.” But is it? The word “pandemic” reminded me of references to the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918. Though that event was caused by an influenza virus, from a different…

  • Denaturing the Mind for Discovery – Remembering Kary Mullis through the Voice of Italo Calvino

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    Sarah Baker Nobel laureate Kary Mullis passed away on August 7, 2019 at the age of 74. Although a controversial scientific figure due to his climate change denial, rejection of the fact that HIV causes AIDS, strong belief in astrology, and open use of hallucinogenic drugs, it is impossible to deny the importance of his…

  • Biologists Call for Open Science, but Competition Creates Challenges

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    Audrey Goldfarb Transparent and thorough communication of data has the potential to streamline major scientific advances. For Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam, open science practices like these would have transformed her Ph.D. thesis. “While I was at Rockefeller, I was scooped five times,” she said. As a student in Nina Papavasiliou’s lab, Zaringhalam aimed to develop a…

  • Getting a Head

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      Miguel Crespo If you thought Dr. Frankenstein was just a figment of Mary Shelley’s imagination, history is about to turn against you. If you believed connecting heads to different bodies was just a gimmick of old-school science fiction comics, here is a slap in the face from destiny. After successfully transplanting hands and even…

  • A Lab Grows in Brooklyn

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      Aileen Marshall Most of us here at Rockefeller and the Tri-Institutions community, who work in science in one form or another, do so because we love science. Sometimes we are curious about other aspects of science outside of the specific area in which we work. Sometimes we want to talk to friends about exciting…

  • Eclipse: Protect Your Eyes for The Big One

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    Miguel Crespo Summer is here and again sun, humidity, and mosquitos will relentlessly plague our days. But the firmament reserves something unique for us: a celestial spectacle we do not get to witness every day. On Monday August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will cast its shadow across America. For those who happen to…