Sarah Zielinski

Sarah Zielinski

Editor, Print at Science News Explores

Sarah Zielinski wanted to be a marine biologist when she was growing up, but after graduating from Cornell University with a B.A. in biology, and a stint at the National Science Foundation, she realized that she didn’t want to spend her life studying just one area of science — she wanted to learn about it all and share that knowledge with the public. In 2004, she received an M.A. in journalism from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and began a career in science journalism. She worked as a science writer and editor at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the American Geophysical Union’s newspaper Eos and Smithsonian magazine before becoming a freelancer. During that time, she started her blog, Wild Things, and moved it to Science News magazine, and then became an editor for and frequent contributor to Science News Explores. Her work has also appeared in Slate, Science, Scientific American, Discover and National Geographic News. She is the winner of the DCSWA 2010 Science News Brief Award and editor of the winner of the Gold Award for Children’s Science News in the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards, “Where will lightning strike?” published in Science News Explores. In 2005, she was a Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellow.

All Stories by Sarah Zielinski

  1. Animals

    The giraffes that sailed to medieval China

    Chinese exploration of the world is often left out of Western textbooks (at least it was left out of mine), but for a brief period, from 1405 to 1433, the Chinese under Ming emperor Yongle sent out numerous trade missions that reached as far as present-day Kenya. During the fourth expedition, which left China in 1413, part of the fleet led by commander Zheng He sailed to Bengal in India, where in 1414 they met envoys from the African coastal state of Malindi (now part of Kenya). The men from Malindi had brought with them as tribute giraffes, and they gave one of those giraffes to the Chinese, who took it home.

  2. Ecosystems

    Light pollution takes a toll on the aquatic food web

  3. Animals

    Cat Sense

    How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet by John Bradshaw.

  4. Planetary Science

    Shergottite SHER-goh-tite n.

    Shergottite is the most common kind of Martian meteorite.

  5. Life

    Ants’ hive mind

    The insects make better decisions collectively than when on their own.

  6. Neuroscience

    Nonstick trick in the brain

    Getting drugs into the brain has proved to be a nanoscale puzzle: Anything bigger than 64 nanometers — about the size of a small virus — gets stuck in the space between brain cells once it gets through the blood-brain barrier. Justin Hanes of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues got around this rule by coating particles destined for brain cells in a dense layer of a polymer called polyethylene glycol.