Global ETD Search
Search theses and dissertations gathered from participating repositories worldwide. Every result links back to the library that holds it. No account is needed.
Results
Showing 1 to 20 of 97 for “"Graduate Program in Science Writing."”.
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I carry you in my heart : facing an incurable prenatal diagnosis
… a child is even born. But what happens when the information gleaned from these tests is that the child is fatally sick? Doctors call these "futile" pregnancies. The increasing sophistication and prevalence of prenatal diagnostic tests means that prospective parents and their doctors are grappling …
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Don't call it a seagull!
Many people assume there's only one kind of "seagull." On the contrary, the world is home to dozens of gull species spanning an array of shapes, sizes, plumage patterns, behaviors, and lifestyles (and some of those gulls aren't affiliated with the sea at all). The pattern of similarities and …
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Interview with an octopus
Octopuses are extraordinary creatures: Despite their numerous biological divergences from humans, they display impressive intelligence. Aquarists and scientists alike have noted instances of octopuses having what appear to be personalities, and some (Roland Anderson and Jennifer Mather) have gone …
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Heart of darkness
… holes appear to be everywhere, from behemoths in the cores of almost every galaxy to more modest, stellar-mass objects spattering the Milky Way's arms. Astronomers suspect that super massive black holes like Sagittarius A* (the compact dark object at the center of our galaxy) may be a cosmic …
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Searching for life where the sun don't shine : explorations to the seafloors of Earth and Europa
… reactions between metals and hot gases from inside Earth's mantle to fuel thriving communities of exotic organisms. Some researchers think life originated at these vents and if they're right, that means there's a chance life could have also originated near similar hydrothermal vents on other …
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The clearest mirror : the science of laughing and crying
There are few things as familiar to us as the experience of laughing and crying. Studying the two emotional expressions side to side is a way to see our species anew. A way of linking what we share with other mammals to that which sets us apart from all other species. Pulling laughing and crying …
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Drinking up the desert
As one of the fastest-growing cities in America, Tucson, Arizona suffers from a classic case of urban sprawl. Fueled by the prevalence of lot splits and cheap suburban land, little was done to curb the city's unsustainable growth until 1998, when the discovery of endangered pygmy owls in Tucson …
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Cosmos incognito : Vera Rubin shines light on dark matter
This thesis, a profile of astronomer Vera Rubin, highlights her scientific achievements, most notably the irrefutable evidence she gathered to persuade the astronomical community that galaxies spin at a faster speed than Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation allows. As a result of this finding, …
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Singing the Brain Electric
Singing the Brain Electric Brain pacemakers, scientists have found, can treat depression by correcting neural circuitry gone haywire. This thesis examines how such technology - a technique known as deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted within the brain - was developed and how it …
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The beast within : measuring the minds of zoo animals
… come far from their early days of concrete boxes in caring for their residents' physical health, zoo animals' mental health-the feelings and thoughts beneath the furry and scaly exteriors-has only recently become a serious field of research. The fear of anthropomorphism, or the furnishing of …
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Climate nudges : psychological tools to fix a warming planet
What if, during your next luxuriously long shower, a small device on the showerhead catches your eye? It counts gallons like a stopwatch. As the numbers grow, a cartoon polar bear despairingly watches the iceberg beneath him slowly melt. Small psychological nudges like this have profoundly shaped …
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Winging it : a bold step toward the whooping crane's return
Since the fall of 2001, biologists have taught endangered whooping cranes how to migrate over a once-lost course stretching from the wetlands of central Wisconsin to the mud flats of Florida's Gulf Coast. Wildlife biologists did this through an unusual method of reintroduction: training the …
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Lessons from a rare disease
Progeria is a genetic aging disease of childhood affecting an estimated one in four to eight million births. Children with progeria experience a range of developmental disorders and aging-like symptoms, including wrinkled and discolored skin, stunted growth, visible veins, fat loss, hair loss, bone …
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The unfinished miracle : how plastics came to be lost at sea
Plastic trash is an increasingly significant source of pollution in the world's oceans. In some remote ocean regions, it is aggregating by the ton. This thesis investigates plastic trash as an emerging marine contaminant, with a specific focus on: the history of plastic trash in the ocean; areas of …
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The butterfly clock : illuminating the molecular mysteries of monarch migration
… of the Eastern United States and Canada funnels into a handful of oyamel pine groves in Michoacan, Mexico, to weather the winter months. Each spring, the butterflies mate and fly north to repopulate the continent in short generational bursts. The monarchs flying south in the fall are three …
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Money for the big eyes
Since ancient civilization, humanity has kept its eyes on the heavens, and the invention of telescopes has only increased its scrutiny. As astronomers strive to see the universe with increasing clarity, telescopes have been getting bigger, better, and more expensive. The astronomy community is …
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Earthlings : humanity's essential relationship with gravity
… scientific questions about gravity's role in biology is being researched in labs around the world, from NASA's Dryden Research Laboratories in the Mohave Desert, to Japan's Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. Space biology research, as the field is often called, involves …
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Swimming sentinels : climate clues from stranded marine mammals
From skinny sea lions on beaches in California, to hundreds of enormous dead whales in the fjords of Chile, scientists have been recently puzzled by a spate of dead and dying marine mammals. These events are so complicated- influenced by disease, biotoxins, ecosystem changes, and human …
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Geographies of nowhere : Smeltertown and the rising wave of environmental refugees
We don't often think of modern American communities as places that disappear. But lead pollution erased the tiny Texas community of Smeltertown from the map. And Smeltertown isn't alone. Across America we've scraped communities from the landscape, smudged them from our memories. Pollution made …
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Evolution in the Cornbelt : how a few special species are adapting to industrial agriculture
Over the last 150 years, humans have wrought sweeping changes to the Great Plains. What was once the prairie is now the Corn Belt-row crops planted from fencerow to fencerow. What does this mean for the native wildlife, which evolved for millions of years to live only on the prairie? Here are the …
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