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Butterfly Biologist-Turned-Science Writer: An Interview with Dr. Helene Engler

Butterfly Biologist-Turned-Science Writer: An Interview with Dr. Helene Engler

Lauren Jonik: Butterflies are such exquisite creatures. What exactly does the work of a butterfly biologist entail? Dr. Helene Engler: The methods depend on your questions. I use a butterfly net to catch them and track them. I also catch butterflies between my two fingers at the base of their wings so I don’t hurt them. I use a permanent marker to mark their wings, but not all species are sturdy enough for this. One can study local populations in…

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Global Flavors: Mexico, My Mexico

Global Flavors: Mexico, My Mexico

by Gretchen Hanson The San Diego of my childhood was not the glossy high rises of the center city or the quaint architecture of the Gas Lamp District. It was a gritty border town of often unpaved roads, homes that were little more than adobe covered cement and mangy coyotes who ate your unwatched cats. In huge tracts of brush, immigrants without the protection of documentation were living hard. Bars were on every main street corner and often smelled of…

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Living My Best Life – A Journey with Chronic Pain

Living My Best Life – A Journey with Chronic Pain

by Kerry Kijewski It’s said that chronic pain is a neurological syndrome, a switch which gets flipped on in the brain at some point, resulting from some kind of trauma to the body. Chronic pain has gone on to be a part of me for coming up on twenty years (nearly half my life). I could go on and on trying to figure out the how and the why of all of the pain I feel, but since finding a…

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By Heart: The Path to Motherhood with Congenital Heart Disease

By Heart: The Path to Motherhood with Congenital Heart Disease

by Kimberly Rex When my sister, my cousin, and I were little girls, we didn’t just play house like other children.  We played “life.” We would begin in elementary school and move all the way through high school. There, we met the boyfriends we’d soon marry in pretend weddings. Stuffing pillows under our shirts, we’d walk with our tiny hands on our aching backs, until we gave birth to our Cabbage Patch preemies, cradling them in our arms and kissing…

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Fibroids: A Women’s Health Issue We Need To Talk About

Fibroids: A Women’s Health Issue We Need To Talk About

by: Fahrin Kermally In early 2005, I was in the middle of graduate school, planning my career, and thinking about the fabulous life I had ahead of me. What I wasn’t thinking about was my health. I ate well, was physically fit, and it didn’t occur to me that anything could possibly be wrong. Even the continuous spotting I had been living with for two years didn’t make me pause.  Not until I casually mentioned it to a friend. “You’ve…

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