Ashley Stimpson Journalist Profile

Articles

Animal Courtships: Our Favorite Reads

2 months ago | atlasobscura.com | Eric Grundhauser |Ashley Stimpson |Gemma Tarlach |Roxanne Hoorn

Having trouble landing a date? Take some tips from the animal kingdom. In these stories, meet the peacock spider that shakes its electric-blue butt to Beyoncé, the squid that puts on a seductive color show, and the fish whose guttural mating call can wake up a city. Peacock spiders are particularly great dancers, shaking and shimmying their colorful abdomens to woo over mates.
The Last Cowboy Boot Masters of El Paso

Jan 15, 2025 | atlasobscura.com | Ashley Stimpson

On an otherwise quiet weekday morning in Segundo Barrio, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of El Paso, the tap, tap, tap of Jose Contreras’ hammer echoes from inside the blue warehouse on Cotton Street. With silver nails clamped between his lips, the 61-year-old uses a special pair of pliers to tug a shaft of red leather over a wooden shoe form and tap it into place.
Book review: 'Rat City'

Dec 5, 2024 | hub.jhu.edu | Ashley Stimpson

In 1946, on a quarter-acre wooded lot just off York Road in Towson, Johns Hopkins Professor John B. Calhoun constructed a rat enclosure that faithfully replicated a Baltimore City block, complete with "alleys" that cut through the underbrush and miniature fences that mimicked the cinderblock walls between yards.
No Doctor Has Ever Performed a Human Head Transplant. This Neurosurgeon Says He’s Ready to Do It.

Nov 12, 2024 | popularmechanics.com | Ashley Stimpson

In May 2024, a gruesome video began making the rounds online. Posted on YouTube by Yemeni scientist Hashem Al-Ghaili, the eight-minute illustrated clip depicts a ghastly assembly line where robotic surgeons quickly snatch the heads from one human body before suturing them onto another. “Introducing BrainBridge, the world’s first revolutionary concept for a head transplant machine,” a voiceover drones.
Twenty master gardeners have collected 25,000 bees. Here’s why.

Nov 2, 2024 | spokesman.com | Ashley Stimpson

They call themselves the “beeple.”In the last three years, on behalf of the Pennsylvania Bee Monitoring Program, 20 master gardeners from around Pennsylvania have netted and trapped more than 25,000 specimens across 25 counties. They collect bees from city parks and among forest clearings, beneath power line rights-of-way and in their own backyards.
New Science Could Save the Maple Syrup Industry From a Sticky Situation

Nov 1, 2024 | popularmechanics.com | Ashley Stimpson

Aaron Wightman was almost born in a sugarhouse. It was early April, and his parents were boiling maple sap in the Western New York shack where they produced syrup and other maple-flavored goods. “It was pretty rustic,” Wightman says, “with just enough power for some lightbulbs.” In other words, not the ideal place for his mother to go into labor.
Twenty master gardeners have collected 25,000 bees. Here’s why.

Oct 28, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Ashley Stimpson

Home & GardenThe Home You OwnSmall space livingPlants and outdoor livingRenovations and maintenanceDecoratingCleaning and organizingHome & GardenThe Home You OwnSmall space livingPlants and outdoor livingRenovations and maintenanceDecoratingCleaning and organizingThe Home You OwnMeet the “beeple” who are setting records and supercharging wild bee research in Pennsylvania.
Why we celebrate black squirrels, but think of gray ones as pests

Oct 11, 2024 | yahoo.com | Ashley Stimpson

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Tyus Williams wrote his master’s thesis about jaguars. Williams wrote his senior thesis about jaguars while he was an undergraduate student. The article has been corrected. - - -Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. At the end of 2020, an unusual canine roaming the suburbs of Atlanta began popping up on social media.
Why we celebrate black squirrels, but think of gray ones as pests

Oct 8, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Ashley Stimpson

Home & GardenThe Home You OwnSmall space livingPlants and outdoor livingRenovations and maintenanceDecoratingCleaning and organizingHome & GardenThe Home You OwnSmall space livingPlants and outdoor livingRenovations and maintenanceDecoratingCleaning and organizingThe Home You OwnWhat is it about these and other “charismatic color morphs” that captures our imagination?
Greener Carbon Capture

Sep 12, 2024 | hub.jhu.edu | Ashley Stimpson

What if the chemical that makes your jeans bluer could help make carbon capture greener? Over the past few years, Yayuan Liu, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been experimenting with a library of organic molecules in the hopes of identifying an effective and affordable material for carbon capture technology.