Life Sciences

Latest Articles

Review: In Search of Memory

Mind-altering. Seriously.
Memory, like consciousness, eludes analysis. Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, the subject of this subtly layered documentary by Petra Seeger, took the approach of reductionism to figure it out.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 21, 2010

Review: The Sun

The shades close for Emperor Hirohito
No sun is in sight in the beginning of Aleksandr Sokurov’s look at the last days of divinity for Emperor Hirohito.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 23, 2010

Ken Miller just can’t win

Brown biology professor attacked by Darwin-hating fundies and leftie atheists alike
What’s an honorable man to do?
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 03, 2010

The Bicycle Feat

Jungle Fever
In the corner of the lab of Shire Human Genetic Therapies in Cambridge, you'll find a guy with DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST written across his lab coat, unassumingly purifying proteins.
By MARIANNA FAYNSHTEYN | February 17, 2010

Séance

Rachel Berwick conjures ghost birds in Zugunruhe
Rachel Berwick's art is concerned with conjuring ghosts — in particular the spirits of creatures or peoples near extinction or already died out.
By GREG COOK | December 09, 2009

Hot for teacher

MECA faculty re-imagine the natural world and play with nostalgia
MECA faculty re-imagine the natural world and play with nostalgia
By ANNIE LARMON | December 02, 2009

Elite Restaurant

Eggs, coffee, and salty conversation
Some meals can bring you back vividly to your childhood, perhaps because your sense of smell and long-term memory are centered in adjacent areas of the brain.
By MC SLIM JB | November 11, 2009

Holy landscape!

Ken Burns worships America's spiritual resource
At its core, Ken Burns's PBS 12-hour epic The National Parks: America's Best Idea (nightly on WGBH Channel 2 at 8 pm, from September 27 through October 2) is a selective, initiative by initiative, advocate by advocate, chronicle of the evolution of the National Parks system and the changing roles protected lands have played in American culture since Congress validated Yosemite in 1864.
By CLIF GARBODEN | September 24, 2009

Have a nice future

Blake Butler rains gravel and glass
Blake Butler rains gravel and glass
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | September 09, 2009

Weathering the weather

Going Green
Sweltering summer heat is finally upon us, along with how-to-keep-cool considerations.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | August 05, 2009

The insult zoologist

Big Fat Whale
Don Rickles, insult comic
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | May 27, 2009

Review: Goodbye Solo

Optimistic cabbie meet cranky codger
So far in his brief career, North Carolina native Ramin Bahrani has tapped into the greatest naturalist filmmakers and come back the richer.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 15, 2009

Brain strain

Jonah Lehrer on neurological warfare and picking a cereal
Those of us aching for a 300-page treatise about the crippling implications of the "build your own scramble" at Local 188 won't, at first glance, find a great deal of solace in Jonah Lehrer's second book, How We Decide.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 08, 2009

14. Levi Johnston

IMPALINATOR
If John McCain had won the White House, then this hockey-playing Johnny-came-unwisely would have been poised for the life of Riley: from a penalty box in Wasilla to a luxury box in Washington. All that for impregnating Bristol, the Alaskan governor’s unwed daughter. But whereas as late as last summer he was vaunted as a knight in shining honor by various GOP pundits for choosing life and doing the right thing by standing by Miss Palin, he has since authored his own “bailout” and left her a single mom.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

Exploring deep within

Animal instinct
Hannah Holmes, the Maine-born, Portland-dwelling science writer, naturalist, and friend to all animals has turned her lens deeply inward in her latest book, The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself .
By JEFF INGLIS | January 07, 2009

Where the wild things are

As our planet edges closer to the apocalypse, the escapist, fantasy world of cryptids is suddenly coming to life
Venture out into the waters and woodlands of New England, and there's a chance you'll bump into "Champ," America's own Loch Ness Monster, who allegedly plies the muddy ripples of Lake Champlain.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 12, 2009

Thanaphobe

Julian Barnes considers the abyss
Novelist Julian Barnes is a brilliant writer, but he’s not self-revelatory.
By AMY FINCH | December 22, 2008

Could algae be the answer for Rhode Island’s heating needs?

Weird Science
Scot Comey believes old mills in places like Pawtucket can be turned into incubators for strains of algae that can be grown without sunlight and turned into home heating oil.
By CARROLL ANDREW MORSE | September 10, 2008

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Disjointed, sketchy, and saccharine
Like Sex and the City: The Movie, Sanaa Hamri’s continuation of the journey of a pair of jeans that magically fit four girls of disparate genes feels tailored for the small screen.
By BRETT MICHEL | August 05, 2008

Rage against the machines!

Could robots take over the world? In many ways, they already have.
We’re on the cusp of a perilous era. Our pitiful carbon bodies are evolving much slower than the silicon and steel gizmos we’re inventing. And the guys in the lab coats and pocket protectors are starting to worry we’ve opened Pandora’s hard drive.
By MIKE MILIARD | May 28, 2008

Good to great

Dead End Armory offer treasures by the ounce
Harrity attributes the reverb’s warmth to the location of the recording, but there is also a collective consciousness here.
By SAM PFEIFLE | May 07, 2008

Springtime for Darwin

The wars of evolution are louder than ever. What Ben Stein, Bad Religion, and a physics professor from Quincy can tell you about where you came from.
There are two stories, and two stories only.
By JAMES PARKER | May 07, 2008

Biolab follies

How did BU's research facility go from slam dunk to almost sunk?
In the beginning — way back in the fall of 2003, when the “War on Terror” was still young — the notion that anything could derail the Boston University biolab seemed absurd.
By ADAM REILLY | April 07, 2008

The problem with the Pope’s new list of deadly sins

Morality
The pope recently declared obscene riches, pedophilia, and causing social injustice as three of the newest deadly sins.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | April 02, 2008

Less is best

The spare science of José González
González possesses the will power and the patience to dig into each of his songs until he has exhumed its bleeding heart.
By SHARON STEEL | March 04, 2008

Learning not to kill

New techniques mean that medical students can learn without killing animals. So why won't BU get with the program?
This article originally appeared in the February 27, 1998 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By SARAH MCNAUGHT | February 28, 2008

Senses come alive

Did art prove science before science did?
Are Jay-Z’s synapses wired to express supreme confidence?
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | February 13, 2008

You light up my litter tray

Could be verse: poetry ripped from the headlines
Lines upon learning that South Korean scientists, by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, have produced cloned cats that glow in the dark.
By JAMES PARKER | December 19, 2007

They shall not pass gas

Could be verse: poetry ripped from the headlines
Lines upon learning that scientists have recently isolated methane-mitigating microbes in the intestinal lining of the kangaroo, and plan to replicate them in cattle to reduce the emission of “cow-created” greenhouse gas
By JAMES PARKER | December 16, 2008

Last man standing

Once a cautionary tale about human folly, has the doomsday myth become just more fun and games?
In his 1954 novel I Am Legend , Richard Matheson conjured up a terrifying scenario: a man-made plague has killed most of humanity.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 12, 2007