Sam Kean | The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons | 2014 | 12 minutes (3,008 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, a new book from science reporter Sam Kean looking at stories about the brain and the history of neuroscience. Here’s Kean: […]
science
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
After the Television Cameras Go Away
In MIT’s Technology Review, Antonio Regalado reports that paralyzed patients are participating in long-term studies of how putting implants in the brain to create brain-controlled prosthetics and computers may help paralyzed people in the future. Jan Scheuermann, 54, is one of these patients. After she awoke from her brain surgery, she was able to control […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
From Boston To Outer Space: Our College Pick
Good journalism explains complicated subjects in ways that the audience can understand. Great journalism makes those subjects exciting. In his story about an organization at Boston University that’s trying to build a rocket, Jake Lucas conveys both why the students love what they do and what exactly is so difficult about it. When Lucas writes […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
From Boston To Outer Space: Our College Pick
Good journalism explains complicated subjects in ways that the audience can understand. Great journalism makes those subjects exciting. In his story about an organization at Boston University that’s trying to build a rocket, Jake Lucas conveys both why the students love what they do and what exactly is so difficult about it. When Lucas writes […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Healing Power of Human Fat Tissue
In Aeon, Jalees Rehman, an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Illinois, discusses the potential healing power of stem cells found in human fat tissue: The discovery of regenerative cells within our fat has opened up new doors. As adult stem cells, they can be converted into tissues such as bone […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Happy Darwin Day: Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben Talk Mass Extinction
KOLBERT Wherever you have sunlight and nutrients, something will be able to survive. There’s a lot of versatility, but it won’t be what was there before, and that will have an effect of its own. Some things will do really well and some things may surprise us. We’re in uncharted territory, but we seem hell-bent […]
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Longreads Guest Pick: Elise Foley on 'The Girl Who Turned to Bone'
Elise Foley is an immigration and politics reporter for The Huffington Post. “My favorite longread this week was Carl Zimmer’s ‘The Girl Who Turned to Bone’ in the Atlantic, which is about a very rare disease that causes people to form a second skeleton. It reminded me, in a great way, of ‘The Hazards of […]
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A look at hypersomnolence, a condition that causes a person to sleep excessively, and the difficulty of treating a rare sleeping disorder: Sumner needed sleep like an addict needs a fix. ‘It was this overpowering desire in me, a physical urge,’ she says. ‘And there was always the hope that, maybe this time, I would […]
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Does our body tell us when we can’t go any farther, or does our brain? A look at marathon runners and the science behind human endurance. A classic situation in which athletes believe they have hit a true physical limit is ‘bonking’ during a marathon: you stagger to a halt, ostensibly because your body runs […]