Portfolio

Science and Medicine

Getting enough Sleep Can Be a Matter of Life and Death
Amidst our national sleep crisis, scientists are urgently trying to understand why we sleep and what goes wrong when we don’t. (Discover)

Mushroom Manifesto
Mycologist Paul Stamets says fungi are key to human and environmental health—and can clean up everything from oil spills to nuclear meltdowns. This story won the ASJA Outstanding Article Award for science writing. (Discover)

Beating Cancer at Its Own Game
How iconoclastic cancer researcher James Allison gamed the immune system and unleashed a potent new weapon against the disease. This piece won the June Roth Award for Medical Writing—and Allison went on to garner a Nobel Prize. (Discover)

The Brain of Ben Barres
A neurobiologist’s legacy: rewriting how cells operate—and how they go rogue. (Discover)

Brain Benders
Neurobiologist Carla Shatz discovered that immune molecules help shape the wiring of the brain. Could they also be key to treating autism, schizophrenia and stroke? (Discover)

Showdown at the O.K. Caral
Archaeologists feud bitterly over how civilization in the Americas got its start 5,000 years ago. Reported from Peru. (Discover)

Caught in the Crossfire
Biologist Andrea Turkalo spent 20 years studying endangered forest elephants in the Central African jungle—until political violence forced her to flee. Now she’s fighting to save her life’s work, and the animals she loves. (Discover)

The Self-Starving Brain
Anorexia remains a deadly and mysterious illness. Could radical new brain treatments offer the possibility of a cure? (Aeon)

Night School
New evidence suggests that we can learn while we sleep, but do we really want to put our hours of rest to work? (Aeon)

Two Marthas…One Kidney
When her mother’s only kidney started to fail, Marthita Cosgalla didn’t think twice about donating one of hers. (AARP)

Together Forever
A portrait of six-year-old conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel. Cover story. (Life)

Environment

The Midas Touch
In Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, the continent’s biggest gold mine could put the world’s largest salmon fishery out of business. An investigation. (Mother Jones)

An Idyll Interrupted
In a peaceful California mountain town, a battle over bottling spring water turns violent. Cover story. (Los Angeles Times Magazine)

The Toxic Schools of Malibu…and New York…and Lexington, Mass….and Maybe Your Town Too
Cancer-causing PCBs were widely used in building materials for decades. Whether anyone bothers to look for them at your kids’ school, and what happens next, is mainly an accident of geography. (TakePart)

Society and Culture

Are They Forgivable?
In a national act of redemption, Rwanda aims to embrace 30,000 perpetrators of mass ethnic slaughter now returning home. (Aeon)

Journey to Justice
A profile of Barbara Mulvaney, an American lawyer who bounced back from a series of personal disasters to become a prosecutor for the Rwanda war crimes tribunal. Reported from Tanzania. (More)

Seeing the Light
For celebrities, the Kabbalah Centre is a spiritual hot spot. But some former members say it’s an abusive cult. An investigation. (Elle)

Love and Rockets
In Astro Turf, author M.G. Lord explains how a search for her father’s secrets led her to unearth the hidden history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Salon)

Plane Crazy
An encounter with Sean D. Tucker, the Michael Jordan of aerobatics. (Reader’s Digest)

The Country’s Doctor
Traveling in an RV with 93-year-old Dr. Benjamin Spock. (Life)

Is Your Dog an Athlete?
Affluent suburbanites take up an unlikely new sport: competitive sheep herding. (Time)

Drama and Adventure

Cornered
A young woman survives an attack by a mountain lion. (Reader’s Digest)

Shipwrecked
A family’s dream trip to the South Pacific turns into a nightmare. (Reader’s Digest)

“I Need Help Up Here”
When a pilot dies at the controls of a private plane, a passenger takes over. (Reader’s Digest)

Into the Wild
Trapped in their pickup truck by a blizzard, a married couple survives for 12 days in Utah’s remote wilderness. (Reader’s Digest)