![Laura Sanders](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/l_Sanders.jpg?resize=214%2C214&ssl=1)
Laura Sanders
Senior Writer, Neuroscience
Laura Sanders reports on neuroscience for Science News. She wrote Growth Curve, a blog about the science of raising kids, from 2013 to 2019 and continues to write about child development and parenting from time to time. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she studied the nerve cells that compel a fruit fly to perform a dazzling mating dance. Convinced that she was missing some exciting science somewhere, Laura turned her eye toward writing about brains in all shapes and forms. She holds undergraduate degrees in creative writing and biology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Growth Curve, her 2012 series on consciousness and her 2013 article on the dearth of psychiatric drugs have received awards recognizing editorial excellence.
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All Stories by Laura Sanders
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- Science & Society
2010 Nobels recognize potential of basic science to shape the world
Prizes go to IVF, graphene and ‘carbon chemistry at its best’
- Physics
Physics Nobel goes to graphene
Discovered only six years ago, the 2-D carbon sheets have spun off a new field of research.
- Space
Distant world could support life
For the first time, astronomers detect a planet beyond the solar system with the potential to be habitable.
- Life
A salty tail
Just adding sodium can stimulate limb regrowth in tadpoles, a study finds, raising the possibility that human tissue might respond to relatively simple treatment.
- Tech
A compass that lights the way
Researchers develop a highly sensitive optical instrument for measuring magnetic fields.
- Health & Medicine
Defining normal in the brain
A new growth curve paves way for scans to be used to spot early signs of autism, schizophrenia or other disorders.
- Life
Microbe’s survival manual
Researchers have uncovered how D. radiodurans can withstand extreme radiation.
- Physics
String theory entangled
Scientists forge an intriguing mathematical link between black holes and the physics of the very small.
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Neuroanatomy down on the farm
Researchers retreat to bucolic surroundings for brain cell-mapping competition.
- Physics
Very tiny, very cool
Physicists outline a scheme to build a ‘refrigerator’ that can cool to near absolute zero and is based on only a few particles.
- Chemistry
How to bug bugs
New insights on how insect repellents work could eventually help scientists prevent the transmission of diseases like malaria.