In the 1960’s, the world was plagued with malaria, and drug resistance was rising. Tu Youyou, a pharmacologist in China, was put on a top secret task force to find a new cure. Her weapon of choice? A collection of ancient Chinese medicinal texts, including Ge Hong’s 2,000-year-old A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies. It was a dark time in her country’s history. Her husband had been sent to a reeducation camp because like her, he was an academic. That meant he was trained in Western ideas that threatened the current regime. Perhaps Tu was even more dangerous to the state – not only did ..read more

For elite amputee runners looking to compete side-by-side with their non-amputee counterparts, achieving parity in sport is proving to be a marathon, not a sprint. South African runner Oscar Pistorius may come to mind: the amputee was the first to compete against non-amputee sprinters in an Olympic Games. Pistorius primarily ran the 400-meter event and placed 16th during the 2012 London Olympics using his bilateral “Flex-Foot Cheetah” prostheses developed by Össur. His success in London led to restrictions on the use of running prostheses in non-amputee events enforced by World Athletics, the ..read more

Science creates many things, from lifesaving therapeutics to thrilling new technologies for daily life. Unfortunately, research also generates vast amounts of waste. The number of single use plastics required to perform day to day studies, from growing cells in dishes to making solutions, is astronomical. Worse, physical waste production is only one facet of consumption in research; it also expands to energy and space use, heating and cooling, water, and, of course, dollars. On the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) campus in 2017, for example, it was calculated that major scientific ..read more

Today’s cancer therapies have some painful side effects, and scientists are on the hunt for better treatments. Chemotherapy is the major cancer treatment used today, and it works by stopping cell division — all of it. Although cancer cells take the hardest hit (they have very rapid division rates), healthy cells are still affected. This results in those dreaded side effects, including hair loss, easy bruising, nausea, mouth and throat problems, fertility problems, and more. Cells are good at dividing so that they can make copies of themselves, and most of the time, they are also good at recogn ..read more

When we think about our professors, we usually think of them as “my cell biology professor” or “my professor who gives too much homework” or maybe even “my professor who uses bad memes in their lecture slides.” Professors guide learning and shape the thinking of hundreds or even thousands of students each semester; their perspectives and ideas steer the path of higher education. But who are these people who influence our personal growth and understanding of the world around us?  What determines who ultimately becomes a professor, and is this process equitable? Dr. Allison Morgan, who rec ..read more

To me, science communication has a loose definition: explaining science in a way that anyone can understand. It stirs a desire to be understood and share cool facts with my family and friends. I was curious to see what would come up if I looked up its definition, and I was not disappointed by the Wikipedia entry: “Science communication is the practice of informing, educating, raising awareness of science-related topics, and increasing the sense of wonder about scientific discoveries and arguments.” This is an excellent snapshot of the goals of a scientist: to discover and make those discoveri ..read more

Valentine’s day may be long past, but it’s never too late to better understand the principles of a good romantic relationship and how to improve relationships in our own lives. To get an insider’s tips on love, I talked to Bailey Steele, a clinical psychology graduate student in Dr. Mark Whisman’s Wellbeing, Health and Relationship Functioning (WHARF) lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. Steele studies the psychology of intimate relationships, focusing on how individual differences ­– including attachment, attitudes towards women, and threat and reward systems – influence relationsh ..read more

For many years, American society has pushed the idea that men control sex. But if pop culture has taught us anything, it’s that women enjoy being in charge, too. When scientists began to research sexual behaviors in animals, they assumed that during sex, males were the initiators and females played a more passive role. As research advances, scientists are finding that’s not the case. Much how in Khia’s famous song “My Neck, My Back,” she sings explicitly about dictating when and how she wants to have sex, female rats want to control their sexual encounters in similar ways. Female rats both sol ..read more

In June of this year, the Trump administration finalized 85 FR 37160, a rule excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections under the Affordable Care Act. Roger Severino, Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was an advocate for revoking these legal protections from transgender people. When Severino said “HHS respects the dignity of every human being,” I felt the dignity of my own humanity sinking. For myself and others in the transgender community, overcoming pervasive barriers to healthcare is a normal part of life. Man ..read more

This winter I went on a journey – a smelly journey of self-discovery – and ended up in a warehouse in Fort Collins with a toddler, a Great Dane, and underarms smelling of whiskey and girl scout cookies. I have sensitive skin. The kind of skin that breaks out into a rash if I wear colored socks or roll down a grassy hill. This sensitivity extends to my underarms, which itch like the dickens when I use antiperspirant. And I’m not alone! In an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology, approximately 10% of survey respondents from regions across western Europe reported ..read more