He went on to cast autism as an 'individual tragedy' that 'destroys families,' while stating that many autistic people will 'never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date.' The remarks drew widespread criticism from researchers, advocacy groups and autistic people. They objected to these scientifically unsound characterizations of autism, along with the broad strokes with which Kennedy described autistic people, who exist on a vast spectrum. There's a remarkable corpus of poetry written by autistic people, who have also written novels, plays and virtually any kind of literature imaginable. The Autism Books by Autistic Authors Project catalogs 133 collections of poetry authored by autistic individuals, which represents only a fraction of the work created by autistic poets throughout history. One of the most well-known contemporary autistic poets is David Miedzianik, who in 1986 also wrote one of the earliest autistic memoirs. He's published his poetry in the books 'I Hope Some Lass Will Want Me After Reading All This,' 'Taking the Load Off My Mind: Autobiographical and Other Poems' and 'Now All I've Got Left is Myself: Autobiographical Poems, 1993-1996.'...

In the summer of 1961, Osamu Shimomura sat alone in a rowboat on the Puget Sound, surrounded by thousands of glowing jellyfish. A marine biologist and chemist, he often sought out such quiet moments to reflect on his experimental failures. For two weeks, he had been struggling to isolate the light-emitting molecule, luciferin, which scientists believed was responsible for the jellyfish's luminescence. There on the water, a new idea struck him: What if luciferin wasn't the source of the glow at all' This insight led to the discovery of green fluorescent protein, or GFP. While initially overlooked, GFP later revolutionized biology and medicine, earning Shimomura a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Scientists realized that GFP, a single-gene protein, functioned like a built-in cellular flashlight. By attaching the GFP gene to another gene of interest, they could track protein movements, monitor gene expression, and observe cellular processes in real time. In 1999, researchers used GFP to trace the spread of cancer in a living mouse, watching tumors grow and metastasize under a fluorescence microscope. A year later, two independent teams engineered GFP into synthetic biological circuits, enabling them to watch living cells act as tiny biochemical oscillators ' the start of synthetic biology. Today, scientists often visualize brain activity with modified versions of GFP, measuring when neurons fire....

The Founding Fathers didn't see eye to eye on all the details, but people in the founding era did agree that it would be the death of public schooling if schools came under the authority of any specific religious denomination, or even if a school appeared to favor one denomination over another. Many believed that public schools had a duty to encourage religion as a general idea and could even offer some generic religious instruction, but a line was drawn at direct control. The reason was that public schooling was not just an educational offering but also a project of building a national identity and citizenry. No public school could ever be run by a church, because no public school should teach any religious idea that divided Americans. In the centuries since, that fundamental principle has remained intact. By the 1960s, the idea of any devotional practice in school had come to seem divisive, so the Supreme Court prohibited teacher-led prayers and school-sponsored religious devotions of any kind. The wholesale exclusions of religious practices were new, but the guiding principle was as old as the United States itself....

Sonja Dumpelmann is a historian of landscapes and the built environment who lived in Philly from 2019 to 2023. During this time, she researched how female reformers and activists in Philadelphia in the 19th and 20th centuries tended to window-box gardens both for charity and to spur urban renewal in rundown neighborhoods. When I first moved to Philadelphia from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 2019, I was immediately struck by the window boxes. The lushness and freshness of the plants in many of the boxes, and sometimes in sidewalk planters, made walking more pleasant and interesting. This was especially the case in the hot summer months when I would often see plants from subtropical and tropical climates in the Rittenhouse Square, Fitler Square and Graduate Hospital neighborhoods. I noticed that there were three categories of window boxes. Many were visibly cared for, often freshly planted and decorated several times a year in accordance with the changing seasons. Some were derelict and had spontaneous growth of saplings and different grasses. And a third category were boxes outfitted with plastic plants, perhaps signaling absentee owners or landlords who seek to simulate care....