Scientific American January 2025 Contributor

contributor scientific americanJanuary 2025 issue of

Written by Alison Parshall Edited by Jen Schwartz

Doug Gimecy
The next viral epidemic

Photojournalist Doug Gimecy (On top of that) Font of knowledge about fruit bats. He first photographed a colony of these fuzzy bats in Melbourne, Australia, eight years ago, and soon discovered that locals were using certain types of netting and barbed wire that could trap and injure these animals. I became a rescue worker campaigning for it to be banned. All of this work was being done within a few miles of his home. “It’s become an urban wildlife story,” says Gimesy, whose photography focuses on conservation issues in Australia.

For this issue’s article on bats and viruses, Gimesy traveled to Queensland to photograph flying foxes. He didn’t have to venture far from populated areas to find his subjects. The image at the beginning of the story was taken in a public park. He found a bat in a tree and lay down underneath it waiting for the perfect shot. “I could be there for 30 minutes just waiting for them to look down,” he says. Fruit bats are “wonderful” animals, but they are sneaky mammals. “For me, it’s important to show them in the best light, so I hope people fall in love with them,” Gimecy says.

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nadia drake
mission to europe

The visceral experience of a rocket launch cannot be conveyed on television. “It shakes the ground, it shakes buildings, it shakes you,” says Nadia Drake, a science journalist who witnessed the launch of the Europa Clipper mission from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center last October. She was there as a reporter and to honor her late father, astronomer Frank Drake, who was influential in the Clipper expedition’s search for life on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Her father’s eponymous equation is engraved in his handwriting on the spacecraft’s vault plate, along with other works such as poems by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon. When project scientist Robert Pappalardo told Nadia about her father’s memorial service, she was struck by the “beautiful and moving tribute.” The vault plates “are just works of art,” she says.

Nadia has known Pappalardo for over 10 years. In 2011, she reported on the project that would become Clipper in her first magazine cover story. When she first became a journalist, she originally intended to write about life sciences. He majored in genetics, but eventually developed a specialization in astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial life. In search of answers, by doing things like exploring deep-sea hydrothermal vents and learning how life can survive without sunlight, “we are learning much more about life on Earth.” “I’m learning,” she says.

The messages we humans send to the unknown can sometimes reveal something about us. “Clipper is in the solar system, and will probably finish its mission on (Jupiter’s moon) Ganymede,” Nadia says. “So those messages are not meant for anyone but us.”

Jane Chiu
The next viral epidemic

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing-based journalist Jane Qiu has been following bats intently. In March 2020, she became the first journalist to profile Shi Zhengli, a bat virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in an article for Western media. scientific americanSince then, he has continued reporting on infectious diseases. Through it all, she has been driven by questions such as: Why have so many new diseases originated in bats over the past 20 years? What is so special about these animals? “I have been on a journey of precisely finding answers to these questions. ” she says. In his feature article, Qiu tells the story of a bat-borne virus that originated in Australia and what it tells us about immunity and evolution in flying mammals.

Before becoming a journalist, Chiu worked as a molecular biologist for 10 years. At the time, it seemed like a logical career path. Her mother was a doctor and her father a scientific philosopher. Following her strong curiosity and love of learning, she decided to pursue a career in science journalism.

She began reporting on China’s ecology, climate change, and development. She learned that all of these factors contribute to the spread of infectious diseases. This is because bats will be increasingly forced out of their habitats and resources will become scarce. This stress can affect their immune systems, just as it does for us, Qiu says. “I started this project wondering what was so special about bats, and I thought what I found fascinating was that bats are actually not that different from us. Masu.”

michelle carr
engineering our dreams

Michelle Kerr began lucid dreaming while working in a university sleep lab. It happened spontaneously. She “didn’t sleep very well because I was in college” and one night she realized she was dreaming. “The first book was a real eye-opener. I started reading everything I could about the subject,” says Kerr. Sleep science is a major field, but at the time there were few labs specifically studying dreams and nightmares. Carr joined the institution for his Ph.D. “It’s pretty amazing how much dreams are dismissed,” she says. “These are real experiences.”

Scientists are learning that dreams are more under our control than we realize. In her feature article, Carr shares how she and other researchers are helping people manipulate dreams to treat nightmares and PTSD. She says it’s “incredible” how the brain can create “perfectly vivid and detailed simulations” instantly. “It reveals something really impressive about the mind.”