When you open a prestigious journal such as Nature or Science, you usually don’t ask yourself “will this article be retracted?”

On Aug. 23, 2010, researchers were devastated upon learning the news that the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.’s Chief Judge Royce Lamberth had put a temporary injunction on federal funding involving human embryonic stem cell (hESCs).

For a liberal arts college student, the contrast between a big university and a small, intimate college can be drastic. As a fellow student here in the U.K. told me, “At Mount Holyoke, you are always taken care of with professors making sure that you are on the right track. Here, you are pretty much on your own.”

Flu viruses are versatile. As RNA viruses, their genetic material, RNA, is not as stable as DNA and rapidly undergoes spontaneous mutations. This is what makes them scarier; it is hard to predict how they will mutate and what the effect of the mutations will be.

As a science major, I spend the majority of my time in the science buildings. As I go to lectures in Hooker Auditorium, do independent study work in Carr or walk past the specimens in Clapp Laboratory, I rarely think about the stories behind these names. However, when I learned those stories, I began to appreciate the rich scientific heritage that Mount Holyoke has.

The Nobel Prize of 2009 honored three women scientists in the field of medicine and chemistry. Ada E. Yonath, a scientist from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, was awarded the Nobel Prize of Chemistry for her work in the crystallography of ribosomes.

With the coming of the flu season, no other news stories are more eye-catching than the development of the H1N1 flu vaccine. As CNN reported on Sept. 15, 2009, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the H1N1 vaccine from four manufactures-Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis, CSL Limited, and MedImmune.

As you enter Mount Holyoke with excitement, exploring your way to different classrooms and dining halls, enjoying a peaceful afternoon at Lower Lake, or having delicious cheesecake at Prospect, you may also hear the terrifying phrase “freshman 15.” In case you are still wondering what “fifteen” indicates-it refers to the myth that a typical U.

Think commencement. What images first come to your minds? White dresses, black gowns or the glorious moment of receiving a diploma? To many Mount Holyoke students, commencement is the most memorable moment in their academic lives; one that they have longed for four years.

On April 4, 2009, at 10:30 p.m. EST, the world was shocked by the news that North Korea had launched a rocket carrying a satellite despite the 2006 resolution against its launch and strong objections from many countries including the United States and China.