The following are a recent selection of Megan's articles.

Click here for a more complete listing of Megan's work.

Nature Reports Stem Cells

May/August 2009

A Closer Look at the Single Cell  

Analyses of individual stem cells are gaining momentum, but technological barriers persist.

The Delivery Dilemma  

Companies approaching clinical trials are racing towards a hurdle that cannot be cleared by laboratory research alone: what is the best way to get cells into the human body?

The Scientist

August 2009

The Regeneration Recipe 

The first cut is too small. With gloved hands, Nobuyasu Maki slices the cornea again, this time with more pressure. The anesthetized amphibian doesn't twitch beneath the spotlights focused on its speckled yellow head, no bigger than a large Tic Tac.
February 2009

Catching Crabs 

It was late last September when 73-year-old farmer Archie Page pulled a six-inch blue crab out of his pond in Swansboro, NC. After catching it, Page spent the day parading around in his pick-up with the crab in the back. "I couldn't believe it," he says with a soft Southern twang. Two months later, standing on a rickety dock at the edge of the blue-green pond, he still laughs at the memory.
October 2008

Bacteria Gladiators 

Kazuhiko Kurosawa was running out of variables. For eight months he had made hundreds of cultures of Rhodococcus fascians - manipulating pH, temperature, salt concentration, media type, oxygen levels, even degree of agitation - each time attempting to provoke the bacteria into transcribing a set of genes he knew lay dormant in its genome. But the soil-dwelling bacteria remained recalcitrant.
August/September 2008

NewsBlog stories

Scope

March/April 2008

Words (Just Might) Hurt Me: The Trouble with "Theory"  

Malissa Hunt's classroom appears haphazardly decorated from a science fair rummage sale: purple plastic models of the nervous system share a corner with shiny posters depicting the burning stages of stellar evolution. A bored-looking skeleton sporting a white lab coat ponders two periodic tables pasted on the opposite wall.

Asteroids Go Hollywood  

It's a little known fact that Chocolate Pop Tarts bring good weather, and that's why the happy little blue and brown boxes adorn the cabinets and shelves of Richard P. Binzel's laboratory. Unfortunately, he's just been told they don't look good on camera, so with a heavy hand Binzel moves the lucky goodies out of the shot, winning an appreciative nod from the cameraman.