Author name: Yaocheng Xia

What’s the deal with the Northern Star?

Science, Volume 68 Issue 2 / By Yaocheng Xia

Freaky freaky Cepheid variables In act III, scene I of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Caesar says, “I am constant as the northern star.” Well, Caesar is wrong: it turns out that the northern star isn’t as constant as he thinks it is. It belongs to the family of Cepheid variables—the type of stars that pulsate […]

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The fall of the aves

Science, Volume 67, Volume 67 Issue 7 / By Yaocheng Xia

What you should know about the avian flu I remember growing up during the avian flu scare. Paranoid of the avian influenza LPAI H7N9 resurfacing around Asia in 2013, my mother stopped buying poultry altogether. She stopped hanging clothes out to dry, fearing that infected birds may excrete on them. She forbade me from feeding

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