Is Radiation Actually Good For Some of Us?
By age 10, most people are exposed to enough radiation to be at risk, but the science is so complicated that exposure could even have benefits.
Valerie Brown
Valerie Brown is a freelance science writer based in Oregon's Willamette Valley. She has written about environmental health, climate change, nuclear radiation, and many other issues for High Country News, Science, and other publications. She was a professional musician for a dozen years before turning to non-fiction writing.
Bacteria Facts to Interest & Surprise You
Emerging research shows that bacteria have powers to engineer the environment, to communicate and to affect human well-being. They may even think.
Strengthening the Link Between Pollution, Cancer
Presidential advisory group moves to broaden focus of cancer research to precaution, prevention.
Questions Surrounding Epigenetics Study Vexes Scientists, Regulators
Only more and better data will settle a dispute about the possibility that environmental pollution can cause inheritable disease.
Scientists Say They Can't Replicate Pioneering Epigenetic Results
The murky waters of the debate over chemical exposures and health just got murkier. And a bit nastier.
An Iodine Chaser
In the capricious world of nuclear waste, a scientist focuses on promising technologies for the capture and storage of the maddeningly elusive iodine-129.
The Ecologist and the Prisoners
Professor Nalini Nadkarni enlists a Washington state prison in sustainability research that has turned the prison green — and may help convicts turn their lives around.
The Danger of Fat-Think
Believing you're fat may be more emotionally damaging than actually being obese.
No Weighting
Oregon researchers develop counseling approaches that reduce anorexia, bulimia and obesity among young women — apparently for years.
Environment Becomes Heredity
Advances in the field of epigenetics show that environmental contaminants can turn genes "on" and "off" triggering serious diseases that are handed down through generations. But there's also a more heartening prospect: The same diseases may be treated by relatively simple changes in nourishment and lifestyle.
The Devil Made Me Do It: Video Games and Violence
Father and son researchers studying violence in video games find that the cumulative aggression seen in the current study reflects a low-grade social violence that's ultimately more insidious than headline-grabbing meltdowns.