The Petri Dish

When he’s not drinking raw milk, mauling bears, or rejecting the measles vaccine, RFK Jr. is busy telling women how to manage their bodies. Trump’s inaugural National Conference on Women’s Health  in Washington was held from March 11-13th, aimed at advancing research, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of health conditions affecting women. The event was spearheaded by representatives from the MAHA movement, covering topics including menopause, hormone therapy, fertility, an

In California’s Death Valley National Park, there is a water-filled cavern known as the Devil’s Hole. These waters maintain temperatures of 91°F with oxygen levels as low as 2–3 ppm, and they are home to the critically endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish , hereafter referred to as D.H. pupfish. Devil’s Hole pupfish, Feuerbacher. (2011). Creative Commons License . The D.H. pupfish has the most limited range of any known vertebrate, found only in the upper 100 feet of a small caver

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash In the winter of 2024, three extraordinary wolves were born on a 2000-acre wildlife preserve in an undisclosed location. Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi  are the poster children for Colossal Biosciences, advertised as the first direwolves  to walk the earth since the species’ extinction tens of thousands of years ago. Their snowy coats, formidable size, and distinctive vocalizations are absent in the gray wolves who provided their base genome

Flasks on top of a graduation cap. Creative Commons License . ‘Tis the season of senior theses. You can’t walk past a TV or bulletin board in Ford without seeing an ad for lunchtime thesis talks. Maybe you’re a first-year student who’s just forayed into the STEM world, or maybe you’re a lab rat junior with senior year looming. Either way, if you’re interested in research, the idea of doing a senior thesis can feel at once completely exciting and completely intimidating. It’s

“Okay, woman in STEM!” a friend of a friend exclaims when I tell them I’m majoring in biology. “I kinda wish I’d done that instead of this useless English degree. I could be making six figures straight out of undergrad.”  “Well, I’m going to med school, so I won’t be rich for at least another decade,” I joke, but something within me bristles at the implication that money is my primary reason for becoming a doctor, or even for majoring in a STEM field. Most of my fellow pre-he

It’s no secret that AI is everywhere in today’s society. You turn on the TV and see the new Coca-Cola ad created with 70,000 AI prompts, then maybe you open Google, and no matter how many times you download an ad blocker, a Gemini AI summary pops up. Even in class, it’s inevitable to see a stray ChatGPT tab here and there. These uses are tangible; we see them day to day, to the point where it’s normalized, but where is AI truly changing the status quo? Are these new uses help

Q: I’m interested in doing research at Smith, but I don’t know where to start! How do I join a lab on campus?

President Trump and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have espoused a causal link between prenatal use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and the occurrence of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD.

Q: It’s almost summer and I feel like a failure… I haven’t heard from any of the internships I applied to, REUs and SURF were too competitive, and I have no idea what I should do this summer. What have I missed? How can I gain meaningful work experiences outside of these traditional opportunities?