From the Editor| www.yalescientific.org
The wind whipped my face as I stood huddled with two hundred people on the Capitol steps. Last month, volunteers and advocates, carrying notepads, pins, and folders, mobilized from forty-seven states and met with two hundred and ten Senate and House offices. We were the Tuberculosis Fighters (TBFighters)—a coalition of survivors, nonprofit organizers, clinical researchers, […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Volume 98, Issue 1, of the Yale Scientific Magazine arrives at a time of escalating attacks on science both in academia and in public life across the United States. At the time of printing, thousands of scientists have been forced out or fired from jobs at federal agencies, and billions of dollars in federal science […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
A recent study from the Francis Crick Institute in London has taken a key step in explaining how the human body takes shape in its earliest stages. The researchers behind the study focused on modeling the formation of the spine and notochord, a slender, rod-like structure that acts as a kind of GPS for a […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Extreme weather events are devastating to humanity. Disasters like Hurricane Helene and the 2025 California wildfires heavily impacted human populations, destroying homes and displacing hundreds of thousands of families. What becomes of our primate cousins, however, when they befall similar fates? On March 14, 2019, Cyclone Idai made landfall near Beira, Mozambique, devastating the area’s […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Unless you’re sitting at the dinner table or browsing through the grocery store aisles, chances are you’re not thinking about mollusks, the group of animals that includes clams and squid. Yet, for paleontologists like Mark Sutton, Julia Sigwart, and Derek Briggs, two newly described specimens, Punk ferox and Emo vorticaudum, could not be more worthy […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
“So please, hurry, leave meI can’t breathePlease don’t say you love me” Like many melancholic ballads, Mitski’s “First Love, Late Spring” takes listeners on a journey through her sadness that listeners can resonate with. Research has shown that people enjoy art forms that portray sadness more than non-art media that do the same. For instance, […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
While you might assume that black holes are, well, black, there is a small class of black holes that are oxymoronically bright. Named because they were originally mistaken for distant stars, these quasi-stellar objects, or quasars, are supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in the early universe that are actively and violently devouring […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Image courtesy of Darryl Leja via Flickr The gut microbiome, the diverse bacterial community within our digestive system, plays a crucial role in human physiology and has been linked to various health conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and colorectal cancer. While some of these associations are well-understood, others remain elusive. Beyond its role in fundamental biological […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Image courtesy of Pixabay Imagine you’re playing the piano, struggling with a tricky section. Your mind starts to drift—until the smell of freshly baked cookies wafts in from the kitchen. Though it has nothing to do with your piano playing, the smell somehow pulls your focus back just in time to perfectly hit the next […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Image courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service Thomas Near, a professor in Yale’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, plucked another three-inch-long fish preserved in ethanol. Seated at his home-desk-turned-lab, he counted the number of fin rays and lateral line scales from the presumed Snail Darter (Percina tanasi). Later, genetic testing of DNA sequences […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Image courtesy of Mario Tama via Getty Images New Haven winters seem less than riveting: grey, icy, and seemingly infinite loops of snow, sun, and shade. Yet, when you look up, there is a good chance you could be gazing at an atmospheric river. Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow storms in the atmosphere. Typically associated […]| Yale Scientific Magazine
Image courtesy of Hush Naidoo Jade via Unsplash| Yale Scientific Magazine
The Yale Scientific Magazine (YSM) is the nation's oldest college science publication.| www.yalescientific.org
After surgery, effective pain management is one of the most critical aspects of patient recovery. Treatment requirements can vary from person to person, leading to high variability in management strategies. As a result, physicians may prescribe analgesic (pain-relieving) drugs in excess, allowing patients to take them “as needed.” While this method is effective, it also increases the rate of unauthorized distribution, furthering risk of opioid addiction. In addition, drugs administered sy...| Yale Scientific Magazine