A newspaper for the discoveries biology makes this week.
One issue, every week. A lead discovery, a mission worth tracking, a specimen up close and a handful of quick facts, and a game to test what stuck.
What's inside an issue
Six things, every weekDiscovery of the Week
The biggest biology finding of the past seven days, given the front-page slot.
The Ongoing Mission
One goal biologists are actively chasing, a cure, a map, a conservation push.
Quick Hits
A handful of short, strange, and surprising biology facts.
Specimen of the Week
One organism, examined closely, what it is, and why it earned the spot.
One Game
A word search built from that week's issue, click and drag to solve it right on the site.
Real Photography
Every story runs with real photos, not stock filler, so you can actually see what's being discussed.
Biology doesn't stop moving between textbook chapters. Field Notes is the weekly record of what's happening while the field keeps working.
Weekly, one issue lands, short enough to read over breakfast, specific enough to teach you something new. No account needed to read it on the site, drop your email if you'd rather it arrive in your inbox.
Who's Behind This?
Ayesha Yousuf
The brains and power behind the designs and finances.
Ushney Khurram
The research and public outreach behind every issue.
These days, biology barely comes up in daily conversation for people our age. Most of what competes for our attention lives on a screen, and the science actually shaping the world around us rarely makes it into that conversation at all.
Meanwhile, biology is making new discoveries every single day. A hidden switch in human DNA. A hundred-year-old shark theory rewritten. A way for people who can't speak to talk again, just by thinking. Most people never hear about any of it.
We've studied biology since Grade 9, and the question that's always stuck with us is simple: what does biology actually do for people, day to day? Not the textbook version, the version that's happening right now, in real labs, changing real lives.
Field Notes exists because we think biology deserves more attention and more regard from students, not less. If one person reads an issue and looks at the world a little differently afterward, that's the whole point.
With love,
Ayesha and Ushney
Every issue, by date.
Issue No. 02 is out now. New issues land here every week.
A little biology, any day of the week.
General knowledge that isn't tied to a specific issue, background for anything the newspaper touches on.
The cell is the base unit
Every living thing is built from cells. Some organisms are a single one, others (like us) are trillions working in coordination. Cells were first observed and named in the 1660s, though it took another two centuries to establish that all living things are made of them.
DNA is a shared language
Nearly every organism on Earth stores its genetic instructions in DNA, using the same four-letter code. That shared language is a big part of why comparing genomes across species, from yeast to whales, tells us so much.
Ecosystems run on relationships
An ecosystem isn't a list of species. It's the web of relationships between them, who eats whom, who pollinates what, who depends on which soil. Remove one thread and the whole web can shift.
Change happens over generations
Evolution isn't something an individual organism does. It's a shift in a population over many generations, driven by which traits happen to help something survive and reproduce.
Every species gets two names
Scientific names follow a genus-species format, like Panthera leo for the lion, a system devised by Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s that's still how species are named today.
Extinction is usually invisible
Most species that go extinct do so quietly, without headlines, which is part of why tracking population data over time matters more than reacting to single dramatic events.