American Scientist

A s the Northern Hemisphere heads into winter and cases of COVID-19 have been on the rise, we hope that you are doing everything you can to keep yourselves safe during these difficult times. As always, feel free to reach out to us on social media or by email to let us know how the pandemic is affecting your research, your university, or other aspects of your life.

In a recent reader survey, some of you indicated that you’d like more special content on coronavirus, so we wanted to point you to some resources. We’ve made a point to include content about SARS-CoV-2 in every issue since the pandemic began, with additional information in online blogs. We recently put together a special collection of articles titled Pathogens and Pandemics, which is available online to Sigma Xi members and American Scientist subscribers. That collection includes a list of links to all our coronavirus coverage.

A new addition to this online coverage is a video of a virtual talk by virologist Efraín Rivera-Serrano, a science communicator who collaborates with American Scientist and other venues. Rivera-Serrano discusses microscopy experiments that show how viruses find target cells and how cells fight back, revealing targets for antiviral treatments. (You can see highlights of this talk and many others, including all the recent Sigma Xi Virtual COVID-19 Distinguished Lectureship series, on our Twitter feed.) In this issue, you’ll also find the first Q&A based on our collaboration with the podcast COVIDCalls; this interview discusses how the response to this pandemic provides a new framework through which to approach wildfire management.

Have you been working from home during this pandemic? If so, you might be finding yourself pulled in competing directions between projects, domestic duties, perhaps family caretaking, and other distractions. Stefan Van der Stigchel takes on the myth of multitasking, and provides some tips for more efficient concentration and time usage, in Dangers of Divided Attention.

All the changes to your work and social life might be inspiring you to step back and reexamine your habits and patterns. In Plants as Teachers and Witnesses, plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery discusses how she has taken cues from the seasonal re-pacings of plants to guide her own life patterns.

If the many upheavals of the world have been causing you to engage more with the daily news, you have likely heard about recent results indicating that Venus’s atmosphere contains molecules that, on Earth, are currently known to have mostly an organic origin. In Unveiling Earth’s Wayward Twin, Paul K. Byrne takes a critical look at those results, and many other aspects of our long-neglected neighbor planet. Venus may have been a lot like Earth at one point, but it diverged somewhere along its developmental path. Understanding Venus could not only tell us more about its mysteries, but also help us tease out properties of exoplanets, including whether they could be habitable. Although we’re currently living with the immediate stresses of a pandemic, it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger environmental issues that face Earth, and Venus could provide some clues.

—Fenella Saunders (@FenellaSaunders)