Marginalia

Why Does Nature Form Exoplanets Easily?

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:00:00 EST

The ubiquity of worlds beyond our Solar System confounds us

Mining the Boreal North

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 EST

Resource extraction decisions are not simply about wilderness preservation or development

Comments and Corrigenda in Scientific Literature

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:00:00 EST

How self-correcting is the written record of scientific and engineering endeavors?

The Cost of the Wild

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:00:00 EST

Restoring an ecosystem to primitive grandeur is no simple matter in a complex world

Bonding to Hydrogen

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EST

The simplest molecule, made for connection

The Fear of the Known

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:00:00 EST

Publishing the genetic sequence of a transmissible influenza virus might be scary, but harder decisions are yet to come

Do the Eyes Have It?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:00:00 EST

Dog domestication may have helped humans thrive while Neandertals declined

Dodos and Solitaires

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

This classic Marginalia on the dodo's disappearance was first published in 1954

Long Live the Intermediate!

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

What’s in between in a reaction matters just as much as what sets it off

Rereading Darwin

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST

Science now takes for granted the importance of forces and time spans we can’t perceive directly

The Rarest Snail in the World

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:00:00 EST

Do development and scientific study conflict with conservation?

That’s Interesting

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST

Curiosity drives discovery. But what, exactly, makes us curious?

The Humpty-Dumpty Problem

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EST

Even when we understand their parts, living things are hard to put back together

Jefferson’s Old Bones

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST

Did the so-called father of American vertebrate paleontology believe in fossils?

One Shocked Chemist

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST

Molecular surprises are sometimes right in front of us, if only we’d do the math

The Biology of What Is Not There

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:00:00 EST

Is it only natural selection that guides the shapes seen in nature?

The Cutting Edge

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 EST

Can stone-tool marks on fossils be distinguished from tooth marks?

Learning and Teaching Strategies

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST

From personal experience and research comes advice on what works and why

Winter 1859

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EST

A single 30-day span begat much of modern biology

Darwin’s Literary Models

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:00:00 EST

It may not be structured like a journal paper, but On the Origin of Species was written according to classical rules of rhetoric