Nicola Jones

This was a fun one to write, full of fun facts I never knew! https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/salty-seas-make-lightning-brighter/

My review of the year, as seen through the eyes of anthropology, for SAPIENS magazine. https://www.sapiens.org/news/anthropology-2020/ At the start of 2020, the Doomsday Clock was set at just 100 seconds to midnight (the closest to “doom” it has ever been) thanks to the twin threats of nuclear war and climate change, compounded by eroding international political infrastructure and the use of communication technologies to misinform the public. I t remains to be seen if humanity will harness these moments of turmoil—along with the global upheaval created by the pandemic—to carve out a better world.

As soon as the kids went back to school in my small town, the lineup at the healthcare centre for COVID-19 testing grew exponentially. As per usual for September, many kids had the sniffles--thankfully, none of it turned out to be COVID-19. This made me wonder: why are colds spreading so rampantly?? Does this mean the procedures for preventing disease transmission are failing? Should I be worried? My answers in Nature today: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3 It turns out that pandemic response measures (masks, social distancing and increased handwashing) are quite good at clamping down on flu, covid, and other respiratory diseases--but not some common colds. Common colds are in the majority caused by 4 common coronaviruses (the same family as the novel coronavirus) and/or hundreds of known rhinoviruses. Rhinoviruses are different beasts. They don't rely on external lipid envelope for protection like coronaviruses do, and that envelope is what soaps and sanitizers b...

I had the great pleasure of helping to develop this Comment piece for Nature, on the need for new contraceptive options for women--in particular, non-hormonal products. Fascinating stuff! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03287-0

Just as Pfizer announced a covid vaccine with great efficacy this week, a great piece I edited for Nature has been published about overcoming the hurdles to delivering such vaccines around the world. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03134-2 The piece recommends 5 steps for the world to ensure equitable vaccine access.  Particularly interesting is their point that many nations don't have ANY adult vaccination programmes at present (not every country routinely vaccinates for seasonal flu, for example, and in some nations the only vaccines that an adult might get is during pregnancy). For those nations, ramping up to deliver a covid vaccine will be particularly challenging; the authors recommend practising with the seasonal flu jab, which sounds like an excellent win-win strategy to me.

I took a short dive into marine heatwaves--the phenomenon of extra-warm patches of water--and was worried by what I found. Read my feature for Yale e360 here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-waters-warm-ocean-heatwaves-are-growing-more-severe The condensed version: 1. A record-breaking Blob of warm water formed off the coast of North America this summer. It didn't get much press, perhaps eclipsed by wildfires and the pandemic. But it was (and still is) there! 2. There's an interesting debate about how to define marine heatwaves. Under the current definition, which is measured against an historic baseline, marine heatwaves are becoming more common (and indeed we will be in a "near permanent heatwave" by 2100) simply because the ocean is getting warmer overall... not because heatwaves in and of themselves are becoming more wavy, per se. Untangling the different ways of looking at heatwaves will be interesting! 3. No matter how you define heatwaves, the underlying prob...

A big part of my work consists of editing essays and op-eds written by academics, for the science journal Nature , Sapiens (an awesome anthropology webzine), and the sustainability research umbrella institute Future Earth . Occasionally I have also been invited to teach sessions on writing commentaries for COMPASS , an organization that helps environmental scientists to step out of their ivory tower and "become agents of change". This week I finally got the opportunity to publish a simple " how to " guide for essay writing. This piece is specifically aimed at anthropologists writing for Sapiens , but the vast majority of it applies to academics writing essays for any publication. I hope it's useful! How to Write an Essay