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. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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,

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Tropical fish biologist Mark Meekan, in a dive suit, swims near the nose of a whale shark.
    Animals

    Whale sharks may be the world’s largest omnivores

    An analysis of the sharks’ skin shows that the animals eat and digest algae.

  11. image of the remains of a church on a hillside in Greenland
    Climate

    Vikings may have fled Greenland to escape rising seas

    Vikings abandoned Greenland in the 15th century. Lower temperatures, an expanding ice sheet and rising sea levels may have played a role in their departure.

  12. image of hands holding a pile of soil
    Life

    Fungi may be crucial to storing carbon in soil as the Earth warms

    Fungi help soil-making bacteria churn out carbon compounds that are resilient to heat, keeping those compounds in the ground, a study suggests.