John M. Burkey— Good patient care requires careful listening. Sometimes this listening is not so difficult, however, as knowing what to do about what is heard. This story began several years ago when I was confronted by a patient with a complaint that at first did not appear to be related
Steven Gimbel— We stand on the edge of the centenary of Albert Einstein’s greatest achievement, his general theory of relativity. It was a work that not only changed science, it changed how we think of science and the relationship between society and science. In 1905, eleven years earlier, Einstein had
John Gribbin— When I started out in astronomy, the Big Bang theory was just becoming accepted as a good description of the Universe in which we live. But there was one big problem with it. Nobody knew how old the Universe was. The age of the Universe is related to
Dieter Helm— Earth Day is one of those great occasions when lots of people with goodwill and concern vent their frustrations at the destruction of our natural environment. They are right to do so, but they are wrong to expect much to happen. It is mostly a dialogue between like-minded
Karen M. Paget— While writing Patriotic Betrayal, which chronicles a major Cold War covert operation with the U.S. National Student Association, I began a file in which I collected evidence of renewed covert activities in the late 1990s. The newspaper clips came from different parts of the globe in little
Dr. Richard Frank— We have entered an era in cancer medicine in which new therapies are becoming available seemingly on a monthly basis. The reason for this is that tremendous advances in the scientific understanding of cancer and in drug development are enabling researchers to design therapies specifically targeted to
With spring finally arriving after a long winter, it’s the perfect time for a video on how to make your yard more attractive and safe for our feathered friends. Ornithologist and urban ecologist John Marzluff, who recently wrote of the abundance of bird life in urban and suburban areas in Welcome to Subirdia, gives
John M. Burkey— Greetings from the “bad news room.” This is how a physician I worked with described my office because one of my roles as senior audiologist in our ear, nose and throat (ENT) practice is to tell patients that they have hearing loss. Since we are a busy
David Sedlak— In 1980, Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, bet Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University that the prices of five of the world’s most important metals would drop in the coming decade. The premise behind Simon’s wager was that, despite Ehrlich’s warnings of resource scarcity caused
Robert A. Askins— The window at my desk looks down a snowy slope through gray tree trunks to a heavily forested ridge on the far side of the valley. This is the view in winter, when nearly all of the trees and shrubs are leafless. By mid May, after leaf