Zack Fishman
Reporter, Life Sciences and Physical Sciences
Zack Fishman, based in Chicago, covers Life Sciences and Physical Sciences for The Academic Times. Previously, Zack received his M.S. in journalism at Northwestern University, specializing in health, environment and science reporting, and his B.S. in engineering physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
An international collaboration of scientists has developed a blueprint for moon-based seismometers that detect gravitational waves reverberating throughout the celestial body, a design that would pick up frequencies that are out of reach for detectors on Earth.
A new DNA analysis of stranded Gray's beaked whales, a species rarely observed alive, demonstrated with the highest accuracy yet that the population is large and has high genetic diversity, factors that will help it avoid being threatened by global warming and other ecosystem changes like many other whales are.
A fresh experiment on an extreme state of matter has settled nearly 20 years of contradictory results about its ground state in one material, using direct measurements of electron spins unprecedented to the material to advance understanding of an almost five-decade-old physics problem.
Physicists and material scientists have created a way to interact with electricity-based "polar vortices" that respond to signals at a rate of nearly 400 billion times per second, a fundamental scientific approach that could someday provide data storage and processing that is more compact and more than 100 times faster than some modern central processing units.
Canadian biologists showed that neurons afflicted with Alzheimer's disease develop disruptive G-quadruplex structures in their DNA — and the researchers found a gene that prevents that.
Coastal vegetation and groundwater flows facilitate the transfer of at least 500 million metric tons of carbon into the ocean each year, according to new scientific modeling that expands their known importance in keeping planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
A valley-like region on Mars hosted plenty of mild-temperature surface water and underground geothermal activity nearly 4 billion years ago, making it one of the best places to look for signs of ancient life on the planet, according to new computer modeling based on minerals found there.
Driven from Arctic sea ice earlier because of global warming, polar bears hunted for duck eggs on land but did so with less-than-optimal movement and awareness of resource scarcity, according to a new study, raising questions on their ability to adapt to living off the ice.
A physicist has crafted what he says is the first theoretical propulsion system that can move faster than the speed of light without the need of inaccessible negative energy. The design faces ongoing questions from other researchers but represents a significant improvement from preceding attempts.
Astronomers searched dense clusters of stars in the Milky Way and found eight previously unknown millisecond pulsars, ultradense supernova remnants that appear to "pulse" in the sky and can complete a rotation in a tiny fraction of a second.
Using photons fused with quantum effects into an extreme form of matter, German physicists generated and detected a new state of light, expanding scientists' understanding of how light behaves and opening a path for further investigation into other strange forms allowed by quantum mechanics.
By tracking hundreds of African elephants for 15 years, conservation scientists have determined that the endangered large mammals could roam more than three-fifths of Africa — nearly six times the size of their current habitat — if not for the growing presence of humans, including threats from ivory poachers on the continent.