Freda Kreier

Science writing intern, Fall 2021

Freda Kreier was an intern at Science News in the fall of 2021. She holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Colorado College and a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

All Stories by Freda Kreier

  1. An Amazonian woman walks away from the camera while holding a large basket on her head.
    Earth

    Indigenous people may have created the Amazon’s ‘dark earth’ on purpose

    Modern Amazonians make nutrient-rich soil from ash, food scraps and burns. The soil strongly resembles ancient dark soils found in the region.

  2. A woman wearing a face mask stands inside a home, looking out through a window
    Health & Medicine

    Brain scans suggest the pandemic prematurely aged teens’ brains

    A small study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have aged teen brains beyond their years.

  3. A photo of spider monkey bones found buried alongside eagle bones to the left and other animal bones
    Archaeology

    A spider monkey’s remains tell a story of ancient diplomacy in the Americas

    A 1,700-year-old spider monkey skeleton unearthed at Teotihuacan in Mexico was likely a diplomatic gift from the Maya.

  4. A photo of a large boab tree in the center with several smaller trees spread out around it
    Anthropology

    Carvings on Australia’s boab trees reveal a generation’s lost history

    Archaeologists and an Aboriginal family are working together to rediscover a First Nations group’s lost connections to the land.

  5. One of Ecuador’s endangered species, the Jambato harlequin frog, lays hidden in grass. The frog was thought to have gone extinct in the late 1980s.
    Animals

    Some harlequin frogs — presumed extinct — have been rediscovered

    Colorful harlequin frogs were among the hardest hit amphibians during a fungal pandemic. Some species are now making a comeback.

  6. An ancient ivory comb with a row of teeth faint signs of engraving
    Humans

    This ancient Canaanite comb is engraved with a plea against lice

    The Canaanite comb bears the earliest known instance of a complete sentence written in a phonetic alphabet, researchers say.

  7. A streaked shearwater flying over water
    Animals

    Some seabirds survive typhoons by flying into them

    Streaked shearwaters off the coast of Japan soar for hours near the eye of passing cyclones as a strategy to weather the storm.

  8. A banded sugar ant caught by an Australian ant-slayer spider
    Animals

    This spider literally flips for its food

    The Australian ant-slayer spider’s acrobatics let it feast on insects twice its size, a new study shows,

  9. illustration that shows a man wearing a face mask that contains a sensor, virus particles with arrows pointing to the mask, and a cell phone receiving a signal
    Health & Medicine

    This face mask can sense the presence of an airborne virus

    Within minutes of exposure, a sensor in a mask prototype can detect proteins from viruses that cause COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.

  10. photo of a red fox licking its lips
    Animals

    Video shows the first red fox known to fish for food

    Big fish in shallow water are easy pickings for one fox — the first of its kind known to fish, a study finds.

  11. a mother and baby donkey with dark brown fur stand in a field with trees in the background
    Animals

    DNA reveals donkeys were domesticated 7,000 years ago in East Africa

    When and where donkeys were domesticated has been a long-standing mystery. DNA now reveals they were tamed much earlier than horses.

  12. photo of an inflated balloon in a field before launch in the Seychelles
    Space

    How balloons could one day detect quakes on Venus

    A new study opens the door for future balloon-based missions to study the geology of other worlds.