My magazine work encompasses a colorful assortment of feature articles and columns that I produced as a writer- and eventually an Executive Editor- at Weekly Reader Publications. Generations of children grew up with Weekly Reader in their classrooms.
My beat was Current Science, Current Health and Science Spin magazines. Each had its own specific audience and editorial approach. You’ll find articles of mine on subjects ranging from life science to earth science, physical science and health. All were written with a curious young readership in mind.
Perhaps my favorite innovation was the Dr. Detective column. I introduced it as a way to show kids that the textbook health givens of today were once true medical mysteries. I designed it to look and read like a case file. Part history, part character study and all intrigue, Dr. Detective was meant to land on school desktops with a bang.
Dr. Detective: Head Case
Poor Phineas Gage. After a 3-foot-long rod shot through his skull, he became a deeply changed man. Discover how a 1848 railroad explosion led to a breakthrough in brain science.
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Face to Face
Step aside, organ transplant. The biggest medical miracle of all just might be the face transplant, a high-stakes surgical swap that challenges everything we know about identity.
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Where the Wild Things Are
Time’s up! You’ve just spent the last 24 hours counting every species of plant and animal in sight. Hard to believe you’ve found almost 2,000. Harder to believe is that you are smack dab in the middle of your local city park.
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Dr. Detective: True-Blue Visionary
“Thump-thump” says your heart to a listening stethoscope. Everyone knows the telltale sound of a beating heart- or do they? Can a deaf cardiologist defy the odds and save babies from a killer heart condition known as blue baby syndrome?
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What happens when a Komodo dragon swallows a stuffed animal instead of a real one? Ask Dr. Zoolittle.
What happens when a Komodo dragon swallows a stuffed animal instead of a real one? Ask Dr. Zoolittle.
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Cold Tows
Welcome to Iceberg Alley, where the typical berg towers 50 feet high, weighs 150,000 tons and lies right in the path of a trans-Atlantic shipping lane. Meet the guy who rounds up these masses of ice before they become titanic threats.
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Monkey Business
Think school is tough? Baboons have a half dozen hours of sunlight a day to devote to being rotten to each other. What their relationships can teach us about human stress and social hierarchy.
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Liar, Liar!
Is the polygraph really a mind-reader? Or is the media not telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the device known as the lie detector?
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Dr. Detective: Delousing a Disease
What kind of disease can kill millions but be stopped in its tracks by a hot bath and a change of clothes?
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Forest Foe
The mighty oak tree can live up to 250 years. So what was ravaging the forests of California, killing trees from the inside out? Scientists call the phenomenon Sudden Oak Death and now they know what causes it.
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Mars Attracts
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: travel 300 million miles searching for signs of life on a planet so extreme that you will succumb to its elements within 3 months. That’s the story of robotic explorers known as rovers, who probe the surface of Mars on a geology field trip like no other.
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The Otter Limits
Follow one parasite’s path from a household pet to the sea otters of the California coast.
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Tennessee Trunks
A tire-store living mascot. A former big-top performer. A zoo cast-off. These are some of the elephants who have found their way to a unique sanctuary in rural Tennessee. It’s part refuge and part retirement home and this lucky reporter made a visit.
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Weather Wipeout
It’s not easy staying one step ahead of Mother Nature. Learn how the science of weather forecasting helps keep us on our toes.
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Toxic Threat
Just how dangerous are chemical weapons of mass destruction? Here’s what we know about these airborne killer agents.
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Dr. Detective: Blood, Guts, and Glory
7 days. That was the shelf life of donated blood in the 1940s. And with millions of soldiers dead or dying on the battlefields of World War II, there was a massive need for more blood and more emergency blood transfusions. How did the father of the modern blood bank find a way to crack wide open that precious window of time?
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Lava Man
How can scientists tell when a volcano is only blowing off steam or when its eruptions might swallow the next town over? Geologist Ken Hon weighs in from the slopes of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.
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Itchy and Scratchy
Although an annoying itch may seem simple, it’s anything but. Your body contains hundreds of nerve cells whose only message to your brain is that somewhere on your body is itching. Here’s how a pesky irritation goes more than skin deep.
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Zapped!
About 70 people a year are struck dead by lightning each year in the United States. What happens to the hundreds of others who survive a lightning strike?
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Craving More Dr. Detective Columns? You’re In Luck.
Can’t get enough of the Dr. Detective columns? You’re not alone. Open the case files on medical mysteries from scurvy to ulcers to the jake leg blues and more…
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Sabrina McLaughlin Smith 