Hope Jahren is a successful scientist, but it wasn’t always that way. In her autobiographical book Lab Girl, Jahren takes us through the journey of the beginnings of her career up until her current situation. Hope Jahren is a biologist whose research focuses on plants. The author’s partnership with Bill, her lab manager, seems to beRead More
Zoonosis: what it is and what it means
Zoonoses. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with noses. It hardly has anything to do with zoos either. Then what are zoonoses? And how do you pronounce the darn word? Technically, the term zoonoses follows the same pattern as other disease related terms, like mycoses. In it’s singular form, zoonosis is pronounced as zoo-o-no-sis.Read More
Beyond GDP: change the game’s incentives by making it more like an open source community (Olympics for the Earth)
Gross domestic product (GDP) has been a crucial metric for individual countries to know how they are doing from year to year. The International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) recently invited essays on this topic. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish writing by the deadline, but here are my ideas. If we are all to continue reapingRead More
Next conference: 18th Biological Sciences Graduate Congress at University of Malaya
I’m going to Kuala Lumpur in a few weeks! I’ve been accepted to present a poster at the 18th Biological Sciences Graduate Congress. At first I was a little skeptical about doing a poster and not a talk, but I think I will enjoy the poster sessions more than speaking in front of a groupRead More
The role of infectious zoonotic diseases as a connecting element for the Sustainable Development Goals
Someone once asked me, “Isn’t sustainable development an oxymoron?” Now, before you are filled to the brim with contempt for this person, it was only a half-serious but quite valid question with a point to be made. The way that we define and practice sustainable development would be very important to know and understand firstRead More
Ideas in virtual space through actor-network theory
This was an essay written for a course I took, continuing on the discussion of geography and sociology. Introduction The commodification of technology has made it even easier to reach individuals and groups that are physically distant, but virtually neighboring. In the Information Age, new connections between people and groups of people are being created inRead More