Jennifer Pinkowski
Verified- Science Journalist, Freelance
- Senior Science Writer and Editor, The Rockefeller University Newswire
Berlin, New York
Science journo. Bylines: NYT, NatGeo, Undark, SciAm, many more. Scicomm pro and instructor. Forever New Yorker, former Berliner. Runner, mother, tall human.
Articles by Jennifer Pinkowski
Scientists Have Finally Solved One of the Last Mysteries About Antarctica's Blood Falls
Antarctica's Blood Falls | National Science Foundation / Peter Rejcek / Wikimedia Commons In 1911, a geologist on the ultimately doomed Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole discovered a five-story-tall, blood-red waterfall in the middle of the frozen Antarctic desert lands. The area, known as the McMurdo Dry Valleys, is the largest ice-free region on the continent, and one of the coldest, driest, most Mars-like places on Earth.
Voyager 1's Back Thrusters Just Fired Up for the First Time in 37 Years
Dodgers Lose Alex Vesia Ahead of the World Series as the Pitcher and Wife Kayla Deal with 'a Deeply Personal Family Matter' The Los Angeles Dodgers lost pitcher Alex Vesia ahead of the World Series as he stepped off the field due to a "deeply personal family matter." On Thursday, Oct. 23, the Dodgers issued a statement on its social media pages. "It's with a heavy heart that we share that Alex Vesia is away from the team …
Why physicists tried to put a ferret in a particle accelerator
IN FEBRUARY 1971, PHYSICISTS AT the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, began testing the biggest machine in the world: a ring-shaped, 200-billion-electron-volt (BeV*) proton synchrotron particle accelerator. The stakes were high. NAL director Bob Wilson had told the U.S. Department of Energy that he could get it running within five years for $250 million, and they were four years in.
Ancient Women’s Teeth Reveal Origins of 14th-Century Black Death
In 1338 or 1339 “Bačaq, a faithful woman” in her 40s who stood just four feet, eight inches, died and was buried in the Kara-Djigach cemetery, about seven miles outside Bishkek, the capital of what is now Kyrgyzstan. Her tombstone was inscribed in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect. She was one of 114 people buried there during those two years—who accounted for one quarter of all the cemetery’s burials while it was in operation from 1245 to 1345.
While Building a House, They Dug Up a Chamber for Ancient Gods
Science|While Building a House, They Dug Up a Chamber for Ancient Gods https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/science/turkey-chamber-assyrian.html Trilobites The discovery in Turkey led to a looting charge against the homebuilders and captured a time when the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the region’s dominant power. Rare art from the Neo-Assyrian Empire was found under a building site in a Turkish village. Experts said it dated back to the Iron Age and was a blend of multiple imperial cultures.Credit...M.
The 1918 pandemic mistake that changed medicine forever
ByJen Pinkowski Published March 21, 2022 • 15 min read In 1892 a prominent German bacteriologist named Richard Pfeiffer made a mistake—one that would have an enormous impact on the pandemic of 1918 and the next century of medicine. In the late 19th century scientists had begun to draw connections between microorganisms and human illnesses.
LINKS - December 8th, 2021
Today I’m starting a new weekly feature at Rhapsody. Each Wednesday, I’ll email links to five interesting things I came across in the last week. The links could be essays, videos, podcasts, photo stories—pretty much anything so long as it has to do with some aspect of the human condition. For now I’m simply going to call this LINKS. A core objective of Rhapsody is for all of us to learn more about what it means to be human. To that end, me just writing essays or short blog posts feels insufficient.
Pompeii's Ruins to Be Reconstructed by Robot
Pompeii that were leveled or buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Some pieces are missing, others are broken. And instead of being precisely-cut shapes designed to neatly interlock, they’re damaged, irregular fragments. How would you solve this puzzle? Scientists at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have a plan: Send in the robot.
Pompeii’s Ruins to Be Reconstructed by Robot
Imagine you have a jigsaw puzzle with 10,000 pieces but no picture on a box. In fact, you don’t even have the box—it was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago. These puzzle pieces are fragments of frescoes in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii that were leveled or buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Some pieces are missing, others are broken. And instead of being precisely-cut shapes designed to neatly interlock, they’re damaged, irregular fragments. How would you solve this puzzle?
Ella tenía corona y ahora podemos ver su cara
Este año, los arqueólogos anunciaron el descubrimiento de un notable entierro doble de 3.700 años de antigüedad en Murcia, España. Los esqueletos de un hombre y una mujer estaban cubiertos de plata: aros, brazaletes, anillos y, sobre todo, una diadema de plata que había brillado en la cabeza de la mujer. El lugar de enterramiento, y en particular la corona y otras galas que acompañaban a la mujer, apuntaban a una cultura europea premoderna en la que las mujeres podían tener un poder considerable.
Spain’s Silver-Crowned Woman Gains a Face, and a Genetic Legacy
New research is solving mysteries linked to the La Almoloya burial site and revealing new information about ancient European people. A facial reconstruction in progress of a person buried in Spain 3,700 years ago.Credit...Joana Bruno/ASOME/Autonomous University of Barcelona Nov. 17, 2021, 3:15 p.m. ET This year, archaeologists announced the discovery of a remarkable, 3,700-year-old double burial in Murcia, Spain.
Ötzi the Iceman: What we know 30 years after his discovery
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. History & Culture Considered "Europe’s most famous mummy," the remains of the man who was murdered in the Alps 5,000 years ago continue to reveal details of Neolithic life—and insights into modern health. Thirty years ago this month, Europe’s most famous mummy was discovered lying face-down in the ice, on the edge of a lake nearly two miles high in the Ötztal Alps bordering Austria and Italy.
Can Mata, el vertedero catalán que alberga fósiles de hace 12 millones de años
Más información Encuentran los restos más antiguos de presencia humana en el Tíbet
See the fabulous fossils unearthed in a garbage dump
The skull of a false saber-toothed cat is cradled by head conservator Xènia Aymerich of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP). It’s one of more than 70,000 fossils found at the Abocador de Can Mata, a landfill near Barcelona that’s a paleontologists’ paradise.
Fue enterrada con una corona de plata. ¿Era ella quien ejercía el poder?
Hace casi 3.700 años, un hombre y una mujer fueron enterrados juntos en el sureste de la Península Ibérica. Su tumba fue una vasija ovoide bajo el suelo de una gran sala en un amplio complejo conocido como La Almoloya, en la cima de una colina en lo que hoy es Murcia, España.
Over 3 million people have taken this course on happiness, some during a global pandemic. Here’s what they learned.
By Jennifer Pinkowski The New York Times | Mar 13, 2021 at 7:02 PM The Yale happiness class, formally known as Psyc 157: Psychology and the Good Life, is one of the most popular classes to be offered in the university’s 320-year history. The class was only ever taught in-person once, during the spring 2018 semester, as a 1,200-person lecture course in the largest space on campus.
She was buried with a silver crown. Was she the one who held power?
A photo shows a silver diadem recovered from a 3,700-year-old grave in the La Almoloya archaeological site in southern Spain.(Arqueoecologia Social Mediterrània Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona via The New York Times) Written by Jennifer Pinkowski About 3,700 years ago, a man and a woman were buried together in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
Over 3 million people have taken this course on happiness, some during a global pandemic. Here’s what they learned.
By Jennifer Pinkowski The New York Times | Mar 13, 2021 at 7:02 PM The Yale happiness class, formally known as Psyc 157: Psychology and the Good Life, is one of the most popular classes to be offered in the university’s 320-year history. The class was only ever taught in-person once, during the spring 2018 semester, as a 1,200-person lecture course in the largest space on campus.
She Was Buried With a Silver Crown. Was She the One Who Held Power?
A tomb unearthed in Spain has prompted archaeologists to reconsider assumptions about women’s power in Bronze Age European societies. A silver diadem recovered from a 3,700-year-old grave in the La Almoloya archaeological site in southern Spain.Credit...Arqueoecologia Social Mediterrània Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona March 11, 2021 About 3,700 years ago, a man and a woman were buried together in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
The priceless primate fossils found in a garbage dump
Abocador de Can Mata Abocador de Can Mata is one of the largest landfills in Spain. Since 2002, a team of paleontologists from the Miquel Crusafont Catalán Institute of Paleontology (ICP) in Barcelona have found about 70,000 fossils from this period, when the region’s neotropical climate was becoming more arid. Photograph by Paolo Verzone, National Geographic Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
The History of the Forgotten Pandemic
By Jen Pinkowski On April 17, 1957, the first news of a flu outbreak in Hong Kong reached an American audience, when a single column of news appeared in the New York Times on the international page.
Why does time seem to speed up as we age?
Time Warp There's a difference between "mind time" and time you measure with a clock. byJen Pinkowski•1 min ago Many of us recall with longing the endless summer days of childhood, when a single happy day at the beach seemed to last forever. That’s because for many of us, time seems to speed up the longer we live.
18 Mummies From Peru and Egypt Come to the American Museum of Natural History
Opening March 20, "Mummies" lets visitors peer inside remains thousands of years old—all without disturbing or unwrapping them. Mar 18, 2017 The oldest mummies in the world are found in Peru, dating back more than 7000 years; thousands of years later, the Egyptians began preserving their dead, too. Remains spanning millennia from both cultures will soon be on display in the traveling exhibit "Mummies," now in its first time on the East Coast.
A Living Library Filled With Killer Bacteria
In the winter of 1915, Pvt. Ernest Cable arrived at the Number 14 Stationary Hospital in Wimereux, France, in bad shape. The British army’s soldiers stationed on the Western Front of World War I were being ravaged by a variety of microscopic enemies. For Private Cable, it was Shigella flexneri, the bacterium that causes dysentery. A military bacteriologist named Lt. William Broughton-Alcock took a sample of S. flexneri from Private Cable’s body after he died on March 13, 1915.
Why time feels like it speeds up as we get older
Many of us recall with longing the endless summer days of childhood, when a single happy day at the beach seemed to last forever. That’s because for many of us, time seems to speed up the longer we live. Sometimes it seems like as soon as we’ve planted the first flower bulbs in the garden, it’s time to bring out BBQ for July 4, and then we find ourselves raking the fall leaves, hanging the holiday decorations, and counting down to midnight, wondering where the year went.
COVID-19 and Drug Interactions During Treatment
By Jen Pinkowski May 11, 2020 -- As Covid-19 has spread across the United States and the world, some groups of people are proving to be more vulnerable than others. While young adults and even children can die from Covid-19, they are generally less likely to get sick overall. Older adults and people with underlying medical conditions — such as heart disease or diabetes — are more likely to develop a severe form of the disease or even die.
'The Other Option Is Death': New York Starts Sharing of Ventilators
A ventilator is displayed during a news conference, Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at the New York City Emergency Management Warehouse, where 400 ventilators have arrived and will be distributed. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has sounded his most dire warning yet about the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, saying the infection rate in New York is accelerating and the state could be two to three weeks away from a crisis.
‘The Other Option Is Death’: New York Starts Sharing of Ventilators
To keep coronavirus patients breathing, hospitals pioneer a little-tested method. March 26, 2020, 5:58 p.m. ET A New York hospital system has begun treating two patients instead of one on some ventilators, a desperate measure that could help alleviate a shortage of the critical breathing machines and help hospitals around the country respond to the surge of coronavirus patients expected in the coming weeks.
‘The Other Option Is Death’: New York Starts Sharing of Ventilators (Published 2020)
To keep coronavirus patients breathing, hospitals are pioneering a little-tested method. A ventilator, one of 400 newly arrived at a New York City emergency management warehouse on Tuesday.Credit...Stephanie Keith for The New York Times By Brian M.
Are electronic health records useful yet?
Credit: Javier Larrea/Alamy Stock Photo On Friday, July 19, 1907, a grand experiment began at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. As the first patients of the day arrived, doctors assigned each of them a unique number and started a medical chart, noting the chief complaint, symptoms, any diagnosis, and occasionally a treatment plan. Patient 004, a 48-year-old woman, complained of pain and tenderness in her abdomen.
Scientists nurture injured livers to full health — outside the human body | Considerable
The human liver is an astonishing organ. Not only does it perform more than 500 functions — including processing nutrients, medications and hormones; producing blood-clotting proteins; filtering toxins such as alcohol; and regulating immune responses — it can also regenerate. If you donate part of your healthy liver to someone in need, you’ll have a completely regrown organ in less than two weeks.
Black Death discovery offers rare new look at plague catastrophe
In 1348 London, people looked to mainland Europe with dread. The Black Death was sweeping in from the Continent, leaving panic and death in its wake. “The wife fled the embrace of a dear husband, the father that of a son, and the brother that of a brother,” according to one Italian account.
Are Electronic Health Records Useful Yet?
Javier Larrea/Alamy Stock Photo February 05, 2020 More than two decades ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—HIPAA—launching the era of electronic health records. The story of EHRs serves as a prelude to what we’re experiencing today in almost every facet of our lives: a utopian promise of ubiquitous data tempered by technical challenges and concerns over privacy.
Estudos dão novas indicações de como as vítimas do Vesúvio morreram
Os bebês e as crianças se amontoaram nas casas de pedra. As mulheres se colocaram a frente delas. Os homens foram os últimos. Todos haviam fugido de Herculano no dia 24 de agosto de 79 d.C., quando o Monte Vesúvio começou a espalhar destruição, assim como fez em Pompeia e em outros assentamentos romanos perto da baia de Nápoles. Enquanto Pompeia foi consumida pelas cinzas, Herculano queimou por causa de um fluxo piroclástico - um rio extremamente quente, denso e rápido feito de cinzas, gás e rochas.
Brains turned to glass? Suffocated in boathouses? Vesuvius victims get another look
By Jennifer PinkowskiThe New York Times Fri., Jan. 24, 2020timer4 min. read The infants and children huddled in the stone boathouses. The women pressed in next to them. The men crowded in last. They’d all fled the acnicent city of Herculaneum on Aug. 24, 79 A.D., as Mount Vesuvius rained destruction on the city, as it did Pompeii and other Roman settlements near the Bay of Naples.
Brains Turned to Glass? Suffocated in Boathouses? Vesuvius Victims Get New Look
The infants and children huddled in the stone boathouses. The women pressed in next to them. The men crowded in last. They’d all fled Herculaneum on August 24, 79 A.D. as Mount Vesuvius rained destruction on the city, as it did Pompeii and other Roman settlements near the Bay of Naples. While Pompeii was consumed by ash, Herculaneum was done in by a pyroclastic flow — a fast-moving, dense, extremely hot surge of ash, gas and rock. At the city’s seaside, hundreds of people died that day.
Why American Kids Have Been Going to Soviet Sleepaway Camp
Like thousands of kids across the globe, Anton Belaschenko went to sleepaway camp last summer. The 11-year-old from Bethesda, Maryland swam in the sea, went sailing, hiked in the mountains, and sang camp songs. He made new friends and ate “the most amazing pancakes in the world.” He and his fellow campers weren’t roughing it: their camp has multiple swimming pools and tennis courts, film and music studios, a fleet of sailboats, computers and 3D printers, and an amphitheater that seats 7,000.
Why does time seem to speed up as we age?
Many of us recall with longing the endless summer days of childhood, when a single happy day at the beach seemed to last forever. That’s because for many of us, time seems to speed up the longer we live. Sometimes it seems like as soon as we’ve planted the first flower bulbs in the garden, it’s time to bring out BBQ for July 4, and then we find ourselves raking the fall leaves, hanging the holiday decorations, and counting down to midnight, wondering where the year went.
A cutting-edge, drug-free migraine treatment is showing promise
Light sensitivity, or photophobia, is a common symptom of migraine. Anyone who’s suffered from the debilitating condition knows that taking refuge in a very dark room is a common way to attempt to control the pain, nausea, aura, muscle soreness, and other effects. So it may come as a surprise to learn that one hue of light — green — is at the cutting-edge of promising research on migraine relief.
How Donna Zuckerberg and other classicists resist hate groups’ use of antiquity
By Jen Pinkowskilong Read When members of the Unite the Right rally marched through Charlottesville on August 11, 2017 in polo shirts and carrying tiki torches, Twitter went wild with jokes. “When you have to use a Polynesian cultural product (tiki torches) to defend and assert white supremacy,” wrote one Twitter pundit. Another captioned a photo of the marchers: “Y’all, we can’t get dates on Friday night (again) so we’re fixin’ to pick up some tiki torches at Walmart & have a klan rally.
Hate Groups Love Ancient Greece and Rome. Scholars Are Pushing Back
When members of the Unite the Right rally marched through Charlottesville on August 11, 2017 in polo shirts and carrying tiki torches, Twitter went wild with jokes. “When you have to use a Polynesian cultural product (tiki torches) to defend and assert white supremacy,” wrote one Twitter pundit. Another captioned a photo of the marchers: “Y’all, we can’t get dates on Friday night (again) so we’re fixin’ to pick up some tiki torches at Walmart & have a klan rally.
Ancient advanced weapon technology theory debunked by new research
If your bathroom faucets look like shiny silver, they’re likely chrome plated. Experiments with this anti-rust technology began in Europe in the 19th century. Yet for 40 years, an alternate theory has circulated in and the media: Chrome plating was invented in the third century B.C in China and used to prevent the bronze weapons buried with the Terracotta Army in Emperor Qin’s tomb from corroding. The claim is even on a plaque at the site’s museum in Xi’an.
Why Physicists Tried to Put a Ferret in a Particle Collider
In February 1971, physicists at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, began testing the biggest machine in the world: a ring-shaped, 200-billion-electron-volt (BeV) proton synchrotron particle accelerator. The stakes were high. NAL director Bob Wilson had told the U.S. Department of Energy that he could get it running within five years for $250 million, and they were four years in. Read Full Article » Show comments Hide Comments
Why Physicists Tried to Put a Ferret in a Particle Accelerator
In February 1971, physicists at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, began testing the biggest machine in the world: a ring-shaped, 200-billion-electron-volt (BeV*) proton synchrotron particle accelerator. The stakes were high. NAL director Bob Wilson had told the U.S. Department of Energy that he could get it running within five years for $250 million, and they were four years in.
A Colonial-Era Cemetery Resurfaces in Philadelphia
In June 2017 Kimberlee Moran, a forensic scientist at Rutgers University-Camden, stood in a pit at a construction site in downtown Philadelphia, just across from the Betsy Ross House. The walls of the pit were shored up by diagonal pillars of dirt. They bristled with coffin wood — and human bones. But what she couldn’t see bothered Ms. Moran still more. “Where’s all the stuff in the dirt that’s now missing?” she wondered.
Here's what happens when your body tissues turn to bone
Carol Orzel first saw the double skeleton of Harry Eastlack in 1995, the notable bones standing in a display case at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia.
Debunking the Data Behind Those “Top Cities for Singles” Lists
The personal finance website NerdWallet recently crunched some numbers to create a list of the top cities in America for love-seeking singles. The site relied on city-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau about marriage status, median income, and the number of date-friendly businesses, such as restaurants and bars, along with a city’s walkability measure and the average cost of dinner and a movie. Boston claimed the No. 1 spot, while Minneapolis came in at No. 10.
Request to Streamline Federal Document Purges Has Researchers on Edge
Last month, James R.
Why the World's Most Popular Wine Grapes Are Vulnerable to a Pandemic
More than six decades after his death, Alan Turing’s life remains a point of fascination—even for people who have no interest in his groundbreaking work in computer science. He has been the subject of a play and an opera, and referenced in multiple novels and numerous musical albums. The Benedict Cumberbatch film about his life, The Imitation Game, received eight Oscar nominations. But just who was he in real life?
The 'Alien' Mummy Is of Course Human-And Yet, Still Unusual
The people who lived before us are often just beneath our feet, even if their tombs are sometimes forgotten. Lost under urban development, they are rediscovered when a subway, building, or other structure claims the ground for progress. Here are eight burial sites that came to light in this unconventional manner. The construction of Rome's subway has unearthed everything from a 2nd-century home decorated with mosaics and frescos to a 2300-year-old aqueduct.
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