Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 101
February 22, 2010
A Viral Indiana Jones
In my newest podcast, I talk to a kind of viral Indiana Jones. Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona chases down the evolutionary origins of viruses such as HIV and the flu no matter what it takes–including getting dangerously ill in the middle of a civil war. Check it out.
Plush Alien Facehugger: You Want It, But You Can't Have It
Plush Alien Facehugger out of stock and not back until mid-2010?? This is an outrage–let's get to work, people!
February 21, 2010
George Will: Time For Some Significant Fact-Checking
A year ago this month, George Will wrote a howler of a column in the Washington Post about global warming, loaded with scientific errors and profoundly illogical arguments. It would not have survived even the most perfunctory fact-checking–despite claims from the Washington Post that his columns go through a "multi-layered fact checking process." In subsequent months, Will has continued to offer new climate howlers, and this Sunday he provided us all with a dubious one-year birthday gift.
In W...
February 20, 2010
Understanding Extinct [Science Tattoo]
Cecilia writes, "I am working on my PhD in wildlife population genetics, and I can trace my passion for my research to a moment when I was in elementary school and we learned about the extinct dodo bird from Mauritius Island. At first, I could not understand what "extinct" meant, but as the concept sunk in that I would never see this bird, and no one else would ever see it again, I felt a deep sadness and sense of loss. Recently, as I was slogging through field and lab work and my ambition ...
February 18, 2010
Giants Lurking In The Drawer
Paleontologists can make spectacular discoveries in remote badlands and deserts. But there are also things waiting to be found–or at least recognized–in the back rooms of museums. Things like giant filter-feeding fish.
The giant filter-feeding fish in this painting was discovered by Matt Friedman, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford. Friedman knows a thing or two about the treasures lurking in museum drawers. As I wrote in 2008, he showed that previously neglected fossils were...
February 17, 2010
The Architecture of Fear
[image error]In my new brain column for Discover, I take a look at recent research on fear. As dread turns to terror, our brains look an awful lot like the brain of a mouse as it realizes the feline end is nigh. Check it out.
Full-Spectrum Genomes
It's been nearly ten years since President Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn with a team of scientists to announce the completion of the first survey of the human genome. "Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life," he said. It's a pleasing metaphor, but it's deeply flawed. There is not a single Human Book of Life. If there were, after all, Clinton and the scientists and all the rest of us would all be identical clones.
There is a vast amount of g...
February 16, 2010
National Geographic Gets Devoured By Carnivorous Plants
I was stunned to learn that National Geographic has never published a story on carnivorous plants. So I wrote one. It's now out in March issue, as well as on the NG web site. It should come as no surprise that the article is accompanied by dazzling photos that will probably make most readers forget that there's a story lurking in the shadows, too. You can look at the pictures in the NG slideshow, and see some extra outtakes on the web site of the photographer, Helene Schmitz.
The Ever-Surprising Swine Flu
Last March a new kind of flu came on the scene–the 2009 H1N1 flu, a k a swine flu. Hatched from an eldritch mingling of viruses infecting humans, birds, and pigs, it swept across the world. Here in the United States, the CDC estimates that between 41 and 84 million people came down with swine flu between April and January. Of those infected, between 8,330 and 17,160 are estimated to have died. For more details on the evolution of this new flu strain, here's a video of a lecture I gave in...
February 15, 2010
Leaving Our Geological Mark
The warming climate may earn carbon dioxide all the headlines (including ones about senators who can't tell the difference between a couple blizzards and a 130-year climate record), but the gas is having another effect that's less familiar but no less devastating. Some of the carbon dioxide we pump into the air gets sucked into the ocean, where it lowers the pH of seawater. We've already dropped the pH of the ocean measurably, and as we burn more fossil fuels we will drop it more. Ocean...
