You can almost set your calendar by the perennial debate about coyotes in residential neighborhoods. Last May, several Nextdoor.com discussions bubbled over when a coyote openly camped out near a […]
Author Archives: Meg Evans Smith
Community Science Project Hopes to Draw Endangered Bumble Bee to Evanston Gardens
When Americans think about bees they likely envision wax-filled hives humming with honeybees, which were brought to North America from Europe several hundred years ago. Honeybees thrived here until the […]
Can a Cholesterol Drug Prevent Dementia? New Study Aims to Find Out.
by Meg Evans Smith Between five and six million Americans age 65 and older live with dementia, a form of memory loss most often caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Anyone facing […]
Young Entrepreneurs Donate Germ-Killing Cell-Phone Cases to Healthcare Workers
Even as a coronavirus vaccine starts rolling out, many Americans still worry about becoming sick with SARS-CoV-2, the disease known as COVID-19. Scientists and public health professionals continue to recommend […]
ETHS Alumni Create Self-Sanitizing Copper Cell-Phone Case
Two Evanston High School graduates, eager to help on the current pandemic frontline, have created a product that could help reduce transmission of the new coronavirus: a cell phone case […]
Staying Busy at Home During the Covid-19 Health Crisis
Self-quarantine. Social distancing. Lockdown. Pandemic. These are words many of us never thought we would use in our lifetimes, but with the continued spread of the new (or “novel”) coronavirus, […]
International Polar Years Science Collaborations on a Global Scale
Spiky, beeping Sputnik took the world by storm in late 1957 when Soviet rockets flung it into orbit during the global science collaboration called the International Geo-physical Year (IGY). Humanity […]
Close Encounters of Many Kinds Part 2
Part 2In his 1972 book, “The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry,” Dr. J. Allen Hynek introduced two divisions of UFO reports: those seen from a distance and those seen close-up […]
J. Allen Hynek: The Northwestern Professor Who Gave UFOs a Chance Part One in a series
Northwestern University has long held the open secret that one of its most popular astronomy professors was also a world renowned seeker of … unidentified flying objects. That’s right: UFOs. […]
Operation Moonwatch: Citizen Scientists Spot the First Space Age Satellites
One thing astronomer Mike Seeds remembers about the winter of 1957-58 in Danville, Ill. It was cold. He and some fellow astronomy club members spent much of that winter outside, […]