All posts by LL

Young Swedish Scientist Reveals Fast-Track Career Secrets

Thomas Helleday in his laboratory, 2009. Photo: Lucas Laursen.

Thomas Helleday was precocious long before he started supervising Ph.D. students as he finished his own doctorate. His mother, a banker, bought him his first stock at age 7. At age 16, the Swedish native volunteered in a cancer ward with his older brother and “was terrified” by the harsh side effects of radiation therapy he saw there. Vowing to do something about it, potentially in the pharmaceutical industry, Helleday studied business and molecular biology as an undergraduate.

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Watery Echoes Give Clues to the Past and Future of the Seas

Last spring, Katy Sheen listened to the sounds of the ocean from a ship off the coast of Spain. A relaxing vacation? Hardly. Sheen, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., is one of a handful of scientists adapting a technique called seismic profiling to oceanography. Continue reading Watery Echoes Give Clues to the Past and Future of the Seas

Probing Stonehenge

stonehengeArchaeologists broke ground at Stonehenge last week for the first time since 1964, with the aim of using modern technology to pinpoint just when builders dragged the first bluestone pillars to the site some 4500 years ago. The team, which is re-excavating a trench originally dug in the 1920s, plans to analyze short-lived organic material such as twigs or grains with mass spectroscopy. They hope to establish the arrival date of the stones to within a couple of decades.

The dig leaders, Geoffrey Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in the U.K., are looking to bolster their theory that bluestones–dragged 250 kilometers from the Preseli Hills in Wales–were valued for their healing powers. Inscriptions in Wales reveal that locals considered the stones magical. And deformed skeletons recently dug up nearby may have been from pilgrims seeking cures. Precisely dating the different building stages of the monument is “wrapped into a series of interesting debates” about pottery, metallurgy, and spirituality in northwest Europe, says Darvill. The project is part of a broader National Geographic-sponsored effort covering nearby Neolithic sites.

Originally appeared in Science Magazine as a Random Sample: [html] [pdf]

Generation Y Workforce

Generation Y entered the workforce a few years ago now, and many of that generation now have doctorates and are starting their scientific careers in earnest. This week, ScienceCareers takes a look at these new young scientists to make sense of this new workforce and the workplace that Generation Y-ers are entering. Here’s a preview, with contributing editor Kate Travis and contributing writer Lucas Laursen.

Hear the original [mp3], read it [pdf] or read the story behind the story here…

This was my first podcast voicing experience. I had scripted a couple of podcasts for Let’s Go in my previous life, but it’s a whole different experience lending your voice to your words. My editor actually did the interviews with the sources for this story, and recruited me as a Gen-Y punching bag.