Contributors

Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and literature instructor at Brooklyn College Daniel Grushkin is used to seeing parallels between literature and science. In this month's Notebook (The istope diet), Grushkin shares the story of researchers analyzing an ancient iceman's hair for details of his diet. "The idea in literature is if you write a book, a masterpiece, you will be immortalized, but there's actually an archive of life found in the body without you having ever known it. It's sort of unbelievable." Grushkin's work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Men's Health and National Geographic Adventure.

This month, Ralf Dahm, the director of scientific management at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, transports readers back in time through a photograph of a medieval castle kitchen-turned-laboratory in Germany, where Swiss doctor Friedrich Miescher first discovered DNA (The discovery of DNA, circa 1869). Dahm stumbled across the photograph while exploring the history of DNA in honor of the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's famous discovery. Dahm says he was struck by the snapshot's portrayal of how simple the tools were in comparison to infinitely more complex modern laboratories. "[Miescher] managed with very primitive tools to discover the molecule of life," says Dahm. "He really understood what DNA might be doing. He was ahead of his time."

Previously, addiction research centered on the belief that drugs, such as alcohol, hijack the body's pleasure systems. But that paradigm didn't jibe with what Markus Heilig, Clinical Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, saw from the clinic. "I kept hearing from patients, 'in the absence of [alcohol], there was no pleasure,'" Heilig says. As he details in Triggering Addiction, over the past five years, a new theory of the "dark side of alcoholism" has emerged that suggests addiction can alternatively bring stress and anxiety, which are relieved by drinking. "If you target the dark side [of alcohol] to improve mood, decrease level of anxiety, and improve sleep, you can bring treatment forward," Heilig says. "I think we're looking at beginning of an era of a new mechanism for treatment."

After earning his bachelor's in physiology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Matt Kalinowski shed his lab coat in exchange for a camera. As a professional photographer specializing in portraits and interiors, Kalinowski is back in the lab this month, where he looked for creative ways to present this month's Scientist to Watch (Michael Laub). He says he likes the challenge of photographing scientists because it captures "real people, as opposed to pretty models or people used to being in front of the camera." His work has appeared in Boston Magazine, Technology Review, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin.