Marjorie Hecht is a longtime magazine editor and writer with a specialty in science topics. She is a freelance writer and community activist living on Cape Cod.
Latest by this author
Frederick L. Coolidge explains the link between numerosity and language.
African ape fossils are missing from a key Miocene period. Did apes evolve in Eurasia and return to Africa, or are fossils missing?
The success of our species may come down to one key trait: the ability to cooperate with people who are not relatives.
Language plays an important role in understanding the concept of numbers.
Scientists investigate whether all species have the ability to detect and match a rhythmic beat.
The broad consensus is that many species are sentient.
By Marjorie Hecht in Human Bridges | English
Interviewing the neuroscientist and primate behavior expert on a question that could radically change our understanding of reality.
Just as humans gradually developed bipedalism to aid their survival, they have innate responses to circumstances and tendencies that guide their behavior.
Ancient human retrovirus DNA could be one of the markers of susceptibility to mental illness—specifically schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, a new study suggests.
The overall picture of when and where the specific characteristics of our human ancestors appeared has a plausible answer.
By Marjorie Hecht in Human Bridges | Human Bridges Project | English | May 31, 2024 | Guide to Human Bridges
Humans learn cues to perceive social hierarchy as early as infancy, and later self-perceptions of lower rank, however accurate, affect health and happiness.
Marjorie Hecht is a longtime magazine editor and writer with a specialty in science topics. Her eclectic career includes working as a community organizer and social worker in New York City in the days of the Johnson poverty program and being a reporter at the United Nations. Now she is a freelance writer and community activist living on Cape Cod.
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Italian Scientist Proposes New Model of Evolution Based on Epigenetics
Current Science Daily | June | 2023
The modern synthesis view that random genetic mutations and natural selection drive evolution has predominated in science for almost a century. More recently, experimental evidence, made possible by advanced technological methods, is challenging this view.
Current Science Daily | June | 2023
Clinical cytogenetics looks at the relationship of human disease and chromosomes, the long DNA molecules that contain an organism's genetic material. Historically, cytogenetics enabled the identification of the abnormal chromosomes responsible for Down syndrome and chronic myeloid leukemia, among other discoveries.
Current Science Daily | February | 2023
Professor Denis Noble reviews Kathy Wilkesʼ philosophy work and interdisciplinary contributions during her career at Oxford University
Current Science Daily | January | 2023
If life emerged from non-life, as many scientists hold, how did this dead matter begin to think? Two longtime chemists discussed this question in a perspective published in the Dec. 3, 2022, issue of the journal Life.
Current Science Daily | January | 2023
A team of researchers in the Department of Biomolecular Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel examined how four enzymes that generate sphingolipids and their precursor metabolic pathways might have evolved.
The researchers conclude that current models for the origin of life fail to provide evidence for the evolution of these metabolic pathways, which are necessary for sphingolipid synthesis.
Current Science Daily | September | 2022
Newly discovered evidence shows that a flawed 1956 report issued to the public by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) played a large role in establishing the erroneous yet widespread view that ionizing radiation at any level is dangerous.
Current Science Daily | April | 2022
Duke University professor Adrian Bejan's book, Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies, examines how physics explains our everyday perceptions of time and beauty.
Current Science Daily | May | 2021
The current prevailing view in biological science is that the DNA of mitochondria, the structures that convert nutrients into cellular energy, is passed on only through maternal inheritance. How this idea came to be, and a theory on why it's wrong, is the subject of a review paper by physical anthropologist Jeffrey H. Schwartz.
Current Science Daily | February | 2022
Professor Mark McMenamin, a Mount Holyoke College geologist, chanced upon a dark-colored fossil bone dating to the Lower Jurassic period, between 201 million and 174.1 million years ago.
Current Science Daily | November | 2021
A prevailing scientific scenario for the chemical origin of life focuses on RNA (ribonucleic acid) and proteins, biopolymers without which there would be no life today. But a new study suggests that it's not plausible that these complex molecules could spontaneously appear prebiotically.
Current Science Daily | October | 2021
A research team from the Department of Genetics, Evolution and the Environment, at University College, London, has developed a computational and evolutionary model that sheds light on the processes involved in mitochondrial inheritance for humans and mice.
Current Science Daily | September | 2021
In an intriguing look at the origins of cognition and technology in nature, theoretical chemist Addy Pross is exploring how nature discovered its own laws twice—first unconsciously and later consciously.
Current Science Daily | February | 2021
In the view of Douglas H. Erwin, senior research biologist and curator of Paleozoic invertebrates at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., evolutionary novelty precedes innovation. He has compared novelty to an invention with a patent, whereas innovation is like an economically significant invention. In biology an example of an innovation would be a change in the structure of ecological communities.
Healthline | March | 2023
Kinute | January | 2023
Cyanobacteria has become a familiar word in areas where there are freshwater lakes and ponds because their rapid growth produces toxins that make humans sick and can kill wildlife or pets who drink the water. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, famous for its ocean beaches and freshwater ponds, has a two-pronged approach to monitoring and preventing cyanobacteria blooms.
Kinute | July | 2021
Entomologist and author Douglas Tallamy proposes a practical way that anyone with a patch of outdoor space can help restore environmental balance: Reduce your amount of grass, plant some keystone native species and change outdoor lights to yellow.
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