ROCKET SCIENCE IS FOR EVERYONE The year was 1969. I was a child of 6, just hitting that golden age where curiosity, awareness, knowledge and understanding all seem to start to come together, but before school starts to beat it out of you. NASA was about to succeed in, as President Kennedy said, “landing a […]
Author: science4everyone
Somebody Found a Bunch of New Planets. So What?
For a very long time, we humans knew about only one planet, which is ours. The universe, for us, consisted basically of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. Nobody had much of a clue about any of them, so they generally made up a lot of stuff. About 2000 BCE, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn […]
Article # 37: Let’s Look at Eyes
Yeah, I know. Sorry about that headline. Being a Physiologist, one might think me biased, but Physiology is, of course, the most fascinating of all sciences. Some people might disagree with that, but they are wrong. Within the broad subject of Physiology, there are certain areas that are even more interesting than others. Opinions may […]
Article #36: Learning How to Learn
There is Science Behind the Science This blog is all about people learning enough about science to have a basic understanding of the universe we inhabit and the science and technology that is, daily, becoming more and more a part of our lives, our society and, unfortunately, our politics. That being so, I think an […]
Article #35: One Flu Over the Chicken’s Nest
It is still flu season. Normally, the major flu season runs from October to March, but this year has been pretty nasty. There is still a significant amount of influenza being reported in all age groups and the rate of disease, hospitalization, and deaths due to flu has been higher this year than any since […]
Article #34: The Immune Response-Winning the Fight Against Infection (Usually)
A couple of articles ago, I started writing an article on the flu, and it sort of expanded until it got to where it included vaccines and the human immune system, which is way too much stuff for one article. The immune system is way too cool (and involved) to just jam in between other […]
Article #33: Science Literacy is Power
I was going to do my next article on the marvels of the human immune system, since the last one was about vaccination and they are obviously connected. The article after that was going to be on influenza and why it is unusual among the more common infectious diseases. I sometimes have a plan about […]
Article #32: Vaccination. Perhaps mankind’s greatest achievement
It’s flu season. I’m going to do the whole column on the flu next week, but to set it up, this week we’ll talk about pathogenic (that means “disease causing”) microorganisms a bit and how the human immune system and vaccination works to protect us from them. First off, it’s important to understand that this […]
Article # 31: Whether the Weather is Wetter
It’s Wintertime, when lots of people grumble a lot and some people feel like dancing around in the brisk air. Most of my family are lizard people who like it when they can sit in the shade and sweat. I am, in this respect as in quite a few others, a sheep of a darker […]
Article #30: Hormones and Neurons and Glands–Oh, My!
I’ve mentioned it before, but I am, by training, a Physiologist. That means I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the structure and function of body systems. You might have noticed that I like science—all the sciences. I don’t understand nearly as much about most of them as I would like to, but I’ve […]