Loading ...Posts in category Columns
Anna in Jordan
By Anna McCormally
Clearing landmines no easy task
The NCDR (National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation) office is near 8th Circle, so it’s a little bit of a haul from my house. Our office is in a tiny satellite office, set up in a refurbished apartment down the street from the real office. It’s small, but the space is clean and open [...]
Anna in Jordan
By Anna McCormally
Peaceful protests turn to violence
Jordan made headlines when protests in Amman turned violent for the first time — or at least, the first eye-catching time. Two people were killed.
We have been having regular, organized, largely peaceful protests on Fridays by the mosque downtown, and yesterday’s demonstration began the sa [...]
The Starving Scientist
By Krystnell Storr
Scientific discovery could improve antibiotics
It will not be long before armies of bacteria are forced to surrender to science.
Researchers have identified a ‘toxin-antitoxin’ system within many strains of bacteria. This system makes it possible for bacteria to program their own suicides in response to stress, according t [...]
Anna in Jordan
Department needs strong foundation
By Anna McCormally
I met Pauline in Arabic 103. While it’s true that I found the class to be unfocused and unstructured, I believe that Pauline did her best to teach a class that had never been taught before at Earlham. Pauline’s under-qualification to teach the course was never a secret, as she said herself [...]
The Starving Scientist
Humans: Nature’s best copycats
By Krystnell Storr
If Mother Nature were asked to describe the human race, I imagine her first retort would be, “Oh you mean the copycats?” However, while she might see the invention of airplanes, Velcro and telephones as copying, humans prefer to call it “bio-mimicry.”
The term bio-mimicry refers to a branch of [...]
Anna in Jordan
A new level of gender awareness
By Anna McCormally
I would like to try to put together a few coherent thoughts on gender. Disclaimer: this probably won’t be academically correct; it’s not something I really know much about, other than that I have a gender.
Thought #1: I have never before been so aware of being a woman as I am here.Consider: [...]
The Starving Scientist
Spider silk holds key to breakthroughs
By Krystnell Storr
Right now, the superhero Spider-man’s only threats are villains hoping to thwart his good deeds. However, all web-spinning spiders are about to become targets soon enough, according to scientists.
The mechanical properties of a spider’s silk are becoming the focus of many scientific st [...]
Anna in Jordan
Homesick hits home
By Anna McCormally
We’re tired.
We wake up tired and fall into bed tired and do everything in between tired.
We feel useless in our internships.
We don’t have a printer to get to our class readings.
Because we are constantly cheated in taxis, even getting home at night is a stressful.
Some of us are feeling just comfortab [...]
Anna in Jordan
By Anna McCormally
Dry times in Jordan
Yesterday we went to the wetlands at Azraq, an enormous oasis in Jordan that’s not too far from both the Iraqi and Saudi Arabian borders. Or at least it used to be an enormous oasis—before it was drained almost completely dry. The water has been pumped up to Amman, where a very thirsty 70 percent of Jord [...]
The Starving Scientist
By Krystnell Storr
Copper a new weapon against bacteria
As far as bacteria and other microbes are concerned, a new enemy has literally surfaced.
Scientists are now attributing dry metallic copper with the ability to kill microbes in minutes. The molecular interactions that cause the death of these microbial cells remains unknown, but it is c [...]
ECstravaganza SlideShow