For than three decades, JENNIFER ACKERMAN has been writing about science, nature, and human biology. Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body; Ah-Choo: The Unusual Life of Your Common Cold; Chance in the Mansion of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity; and Notes from the Sea are among her most recent works. Ackerman has written for Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, and many other magazines. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Bunting Fellowship, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. The Sloan Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing