Ker Than
IMAGE CREDIT: BRIAN CHOO
BIO- RESUME
- SELECTED CLIPS
- MY RECENT ARTICLES
- PLACES I'M PUBLISHED
- CONTACT
-
BIO
I’m Ker Than, a science writer based in New York City.
I’m a thorough reporter and a confident writer who can write breaking news stories under tight deadlines or longer features that explore a topic in detail.
I have interviewed Nobel Laureates; watched space shuttles lift off from Cape Canaveral; and visited the site of the world’s first atomic bomb test in the deserts of New Mexico. Some of my favorite stories have been about people who feel, hear, and smell colors, music’s biological roots, the fallacies of intelligent design, and the final moments of dying stars.
I have a masters degree from New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP). Before becoming a freelancer, I was a staff writer at LiveScience.com and Space.com. I’m a contributor to several publications, including National Geographic News, New Scientist, Nature News, and Popular Science. I’m also the author of children’s books about stars and earthquakes for Scholastic.
This is my writing portfolio, where you can view samples of my writing and my resume.
-
RESUME
Ker Than
kerthan@gmail.com
http://www.kerthan.comJOURNALISM EXPERIENCE
Freelance Science Writer, July 2004-Present
Contributor to National Geographic News, ScienceNOW, Nature News, New Scientist, Sky & Telescope, Cosmos Magazine, and other publicationsAuthor, Scholastic Inc., February 2008-February 2009
Authored three science books for young children on the topics of earthquakes, stars, and black holesStaff Writer, LiveScience.com, January 2005-December 2007
Wrote breaking news and feature articles about science topics ranging from human evolution to global warmingStaff Writer, SPACE.com, January 2005-December 2007
Covered astronomy and spaceflight (manned and unmanned) newsEDUCATION
M.A., New York University, Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP), Dec. 2005
B.S., University of California, Irvine, Biological Sciences, June 2003
-Emphasis in the neurobiology of learning and memoryOTHER EXPERIENCE
Research Assistant, UCI Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, June 2000 - June 2003
Conducted experiments investigating the relationship between behavioral learning and receptive field plasticity in auditory cortexHONORS
-2007 Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism (group award for work at LiveScience)-2003 Excellence in Research, UC Irvine
-2001 Ralph Waldo Gerard Prize in the History of Neuroscience, UC Irvine
-
SELECTED CLIPS
James Cameron Headed to Ocean's Deepest Point Within Weeks
"Squeezed into a submersible as futuristic as anything in his movies, James Cameron intends to descend solo to the ocean's deepest point within weeks, the Canadian filmmaker and explorer announced Thursday."
King Tut Mysteries Solved: Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred
"King Tut may be seen as the golden boy of ancient Egypt today, but during his reign, Tutankhamun wasn't exactly a strapping sun god."
Visiting Trinity
"People visit Trinity for different reasons. They come to remember, to give thanks, to pay penance, to make peace, to see a wonder of the modern world: the birthplace of the atomic age."
Intelligent Design: An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution
"For Americans who view evolution as inconsistent with their intuitions or beliefs about life and how it began, Creationism has always been a seductive alternative."
Night Lights: Shuttle Discovery Rockets Toward Space Station
"For a few brief moments, night turned to day at NASA's Kennedy Space Center as the shuttle Discovery climbed into space atop twin columns of fire and smoke in the agency's first evening launch in four years."
In Search of Music's Biological Roots
"Much of music's power lies in its ability to communicate without words, to speak directly to our emotions. Melodies can etch themselves into our brains and remain for a lifetime. Songs can break your heart, or help to mend it."
-
Posts
- May 18, 12
Insects—and aquatic bugs in particular—could be key to understanding how the opening of an ambitious new highway connecting Brazil and Peru will affect the Amazon rain forest.
- May 18, 12
This weekend, SpaceX is poised to launch the first commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), a feat previously performed by only a few governments.
- May 16, 12
Unsafe conditions on Mount Everest have forced a National Geographic team to cancel plans to climb the rarely traversed West Ridge of the world's tallest peak.
- May 16, 12
A NASA spacecraft has witnessed hundreds of "superflares" coming from sunlike stars—and the observations suggest that the trigger for such massive outbursts remains a mystery.
- May 09, 12
Around the world today, searchers are stumbling upon a gilt- and sepia-toned artifact of the Internet age—a Google doodle heralding the 138th birthday of Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the ancient Egyptian tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.
- May 03, 12
Climate change is predicted to cause more intense and frequent floods and droughts in Southeast Asia, threatening the world's rice bowl and millions of people who live there unless preventive actions are taken soon, scientists warn.
- May 01, 12
An atom-smashing experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has detected a new subatomic particle—and it's a beauty.
- Apr 30, 12
A huge "structure" of satellite galaxies and star clusters has been found wheeling around the Milky Way, according to a new study.
- Apr 25, 12
About a dozen weather balloons carrying high-definition cameras and science experiments took to the skies this month as part of an unprecedented study of auroras.
- Apr 22, 12
A Nepali guide on Mount Everest plummeted 150 feet (46 meters)—roughly equivalent to falling from a 15-story building—into an ice crevasse Saturday, a National Geographic team on Everest reported.
- Apr 20, 12
Workers clear a road through Brazil's Amazon rain forest—one of the world's ten most threatened forests, according to an international conservation group.
- Apr 19, 12
Dark matter is mysteriously missing from the sun's neighborhood, according to a new study that could provide ammunition for skeptics who argue that the invisible substance is just an illusion.
- Apr 18, 12
The head of a Buddha statue peeks above the dirt in Handan, China, where archaeologists have reportedly unearthed nearly 3,000 Buddha statues, which could be up to 1,500 years old.
- Apr 13, 12
A fresh look at NASA data suggests that a robotic mission uncovered microbial life on Mars—more than 30 years ago.
- Apr 11, 12
The powerful earthquake that struck off Indonesia Wednesday sparked a short-lived tsunami alert for much of the Indian Ocean—and panic in the streets of Aceh Province, in which a 2004 tsunami off Indonesia killed some 170,000 people.
- Apr 05, 12
As global warming triggers heavier rainfall and faster snowmelt in the Arctic, Inuit communities in Canada are reporting more cases of illness attributed to pathogens that have washed into surface water and groundwater, according to a new study.
- Apr 04, 12
Supermassive black holes lurking at the centers of galaxies might be achieving their monstrous girths by tearing apart stellar partners, new computer models suggest.
- Apr 03, 12
At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.
- Apr 03, 12
At 5:52 p.m. ET Sunday (7:52 a.m. Monday, local time), James Cameron arrived at the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep, members of the National Geographic expedition have confirmed.
- Apr 03, 12
After years of preparation and days of uncooperative weather, James Cameron, at approximately 3:15 p.m. ET (5:15 a.m., local time), began descending solo to Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.
- Mar 27, 12
Two huge planets found orbiting a star 375 light-years away are the oldest alien worlds yet discovered, scientists say.
- Mar 26, 12
In what he called a "heckuva ride," James Cameron came "screaming back up" from Earth's deepest point in about 70 minutes Monday, breaking the Pacific Ocean surface on Monday at noon, local time (10 p.m. ET Sunday).
- Mar 19, 12
Pinpricks of light on the shore seem to mirror stars above in an undated picture taken on Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives.
- Mar 09, 12
A year ago this week, a tsunami wave crashes over a seawall in the city of Miyako, Japan, shortly after a devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the region.
- Mar 09, 12
According to a new study, Microraptors—four-winged, feathered dinosaurs that lived 125 million years ago—sported Earth's earliest known iridescence, as pictured in this illustration.
- Mar 08, 12
While thousands of climbers have successfully scaled Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, only two people have descended to the planet’s deepest point, the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench.
- Mar 08, 12
James Cameron stands beside his newly revealed submersible, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, earlier this month.
- Mar 07, 12
An unusual patch of sky devoid of galaxies could hint at the existence of more than one type of dark matter, scientists say.
- Mar 05, 12
A man hauls a shark to market in Aden, Yemen, in a photo by Yuri Kozyrev for Time magazine. The image is among the winners—11 of them presented here—of this year's Pictures of the Year International (POYi) contest.
- Mar 02, 12
More than a thousand potential new planets have been found outside our solar system—nearly doubling the number of candidates discovered so far by NASA's Kepler space telescope, according to a new study.
- Feb 28, 12
Some mammals need roughly 24 million generations to go from mouse-size to elephant-size, a new study says.
- Feb 27, 12
Rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice could be behind the recent unusually cold and snowy winters in the Northern Hemisphere, a new model suggests.
- Feb 21, 12
A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or "artificial glaciers," to get through the dry spring months.
- Feb 17, 12
Linguist David Harrison (middle) documents the endangered language of Matukar Panau with the aid of native speaker John Agid (left) in Papua New Guinea. Matukar Panau is one of eight endangered languages featured in a "talking dictionary" project announced today.
- Feb 15, 12
Match-tip tiny, Brookesia micra (juvenile pictured) is the smallest of four new chameleon species found on the African island country of Madagascar. With an average adult length of just over an inch (2.9 centimeters) from snout to tail, B. micra is among the tiniest reptiles in the world.
- Feb 15, 12
A powerful repulsion between normal matter and hidden pockets of antimatter could be an alternate explanation for the mysterious force known as dark energy, according to a controversial new theory.
- Feb 10, 12
Two Earth-size worlds orbiting perilously close to their dying star may be the fractured remnants of a Jupiter-like gas giant, a new study suggests.
- Jan 31, 12
Last week NASA's Kepler mission added 26 new planets in 11 star systems to the roster of confirmed extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. The find tripled the number of known planet systems with multiple worlds that transit—or pass in front of—their stars.
- Jan 31, 12
Water filtration technology has advanced to the point where wastewater can be rendered safe for drinking, according to a new report, but legislative and psychological hurdles will need to be overcome before widespread adoption can happen.
- Jan 27, 12
The recent uptick in solar flares and other activity on the sun could one day cripple satellites or knock out power grids on Earth. But in the meantime, the solar maelstrom has been helping to clear out space junk, NASA scientists report.
- Jan 24, 12
One of the first dinosaurs to take to the air had wings with at least one black feather, according to a new study.
- Jan 23, 12
Astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin snaps a self-portrait while spacewalking during NASA's Gemini 12 mission in November 1966. Part of a camera (foreground) and the antenna of an unmanned Agena target vehicle—used during the Gemini program for rendezvous and docking practice—are visible in the left corner of the frame.
- Jan 12, 12
More than a hundred national parks and historical sites across the United States will waive admissions fees from Friday through Monday to commemorate Martin Luther King Day.
- Jan 05, 12
Built nearly three decades ago but never used, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (pictured) in the Philippines is now being promoted by its parent company, the National Power Corporation, as a new ecotourism site. Visitors can tour the plant and stay the night at an adjacent beach, which is home to a turtle sanctuary.
- Dec 24, 11
Photographer Thomas Kokta was a runner-up in the "One Shot Wild Moments" category of the 2011 Travel Photographer of the Year competition, which is run by an independent group of travel photographers in the U.K.
- Dec 21, 11
Two newfound Earth-size planets are probably the charred survivors of a near-death encounter with their fading parent star, scientists say.
- Dec 20, 11
Pharaonic faces stare out from charred pages in Cairo's Egyptian Scientific Complex on Monday. The documents are among thousands of precious historic works damaged or destroyed by a fire that consumed the structure over the weekend.
- Dec 16, 11
Flexible farming methods and the ability to quickly change tactics to deal with unpredictable swings in rainfall will be vital if African nations are to survive climate change in the coming decades, scientists say.
- Dec 14, 11
By plane and by skis, a steady stream of visitors are flocking to the South Pole in time for the centennial celebrations of two pioneering Antarctic expeditions.
- Dec 13, 11
Physicists are hopeful that the long-sought Higgs boson is finally within reach, after two experiments at the proton-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) observed tantalizing hints of the elusive particle.
-
PLACES I'M PUBLISHED
-
CONTACT
