The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

Finding comfort in nature’s endurance

Why do we see in a tiny, narrow optical band, and why does our Sun light our world at these wavelengths?

If you travel in the same circles I do, you probably know that my friend and colleague Mark Witton is working on a speculative biology book, Dinosaurs Evolved, that takes a fresh look at what life …

At first glance, searching for a way to heal an injured brain in the leg makes little sense.

Selective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?

Two years after Hurricane Helene, choosing hope and optimism

One way to AI-proof the classroom

and just-so stories.

I read “Horses: A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World” by Ludovic Orlando really fast! OK, it’s a holiday weekend and no riding…

Many decades ago when I was a kid, the story of horse evolution, domestication and its history of relationship with humans, was a simple…

The 44-year-old has now won the Olympic, European and world titles.

Steve Guerdat is standing atop the podium at Aachen, tears streaming down his face. The Swiss anthem echoing across the Hauptsadion. The individual gold medal pressed to his lips just moments before. ...

Watching tidal pools fill, a meditation on love and healing

Wandering around an infinitely complex, ever-changing world. Click to read The Garden of Forking Paths, by Brian Klaas, a Substack publication.

The case for books and paying attention

and treasuring your exceptions

Reflections on a shared experience of maternal grief

How power actually works, who got erased, and where we go next. Mainstream history can be rewritten. The books on your kids shelf in your house cannot.

Our hardest political questions arrive pre-loaded with two wrong answers. It's worth looking beyond false dichotomies to figure out real solutions.

Teaching Fictions #4

More light at the day’s end comes at a price: much later winter sunrises across much of the U.S. Scientists have documented consequences for public health and the economy.

Sharing the land with black bears in Asheville is wild. I wouldn’t live any other way.

Changing the national clock will not change human biology, but smarter scheduling can help leaders align work with biological rhythms.

Another post inspired by my research into my Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics book! Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but merely converted from one form to another. Such is a typical st…

A long time ago, bored with painting exploding spacecraft for others, I started painting alien creatures for my own pleasure. — Gert van Dijk, from the Appendix I’m distinctly late to t…

A probiotic paradox

This essay was prompted by a belated obituary in The New York Times from July 4, 2026, titled: “Stanley M. Gartler, Pioneer in Cancer Research, Dies at 102.” Gartler actually died earlier, on May 25,....

Contaminated irrigation or processing water is more likely the source of the Cyclospora outbreak. There are many systemic failures, outlined here.

Collecting water sounds has shown me that language alone can't describe them

2 Decline, 2 Deviance

Teaching Fictions #2

Teaching Fictions #1

Why the story of the world's favourite fruit is actually the story of everything

Black bears need expansive landscapes; and sometimes so does our grief.

Even in today's climate, there should be one fundamental principle everyone respects: whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave their kids alone.

Our genetic heritage is not a blueprint or an algorithm, as many biologists have imagined, but something else entirely.

Move part of a strategic decision to focus on its core global publishing activities across research, health and education

The following is a statement from Writers Guild of America East members at Scientific American on today’s decision to sell Springer Nature and lay off staff: “Earlier today in an all-staff meeting we ...

From Digitisation to Disenfranchisement

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- LabX Media Group today announced that it has acquired Scientific American, one of the world's most established and respected science...

The universe handed me a giant do-over — and I took it.

SE Gyges blog

Short Shelf Lives Make For Bad Curricular Planning