“Society needs to be getting back in touch with the natural world,” says Cristina Negri, agronomist and environmental engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. “The natural state is not looking at a computer all day long.”

Negri worries that as a populace we distance ourselves from the calming benefits of being in nature. As a young girl growing up near the mountains of northern Italy, she was exposed to the natural world early on, and it was her appreciation of nature's calming splendor in the mountains that drew her into the field of agricultural science.

In 1973 the Feminist Press first published Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers; the second edition will come out July 2010. The authors, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, first published the book themselves in pamphlet form. The book’s distribution consisted of shipments in re-purposed Pampers cartons before the Feminist Press took it up.

Digging for fossils at the Grand Canyon? Interning on a wildlife preserve? Doing archeological field research in a rainforest? Vacationing in an exotic place while discovering new marine life? Or taking a family camping trip?

If you're doing any of these or something else involving summer and science, we invite you to share your science experiences with Under the Microscope.

Send us your favorite summer science photos and stories (before August 15th) and we'll post them throughout the month of July (& part of August) for our event "Summer Science Stories."