Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 115

From fishapod to FAIL

The Zimmer family takes over Bloggingheads. My brother Ben takes me on a journey through Word World. Check it out.

We Are Russian Dolls

Over at the Origins blog at Science, I follow up on my essay on the evolution of eukaryotes with a look at a new paper that suggests we are, ultimately, microbes within microbes within microbes. Check it out.

[Image: Wikipedia]

Science On Shoals Is Live

I've posted the first two stories from students in my science writing class over at Science on Shoals. (plus an explanatory introduction). One piece is about the mysteries of bird migrations, and the other's on a new technology for seeing skeletons in motion in 3-D. And there's plenty more to come. Check it out.

Never Mind The Neurological Elephant In the Corner…

[image error]From time to time, I've asked around for a good estimate of how many neurons are in the human brain. Ten billion–100 billion–something like that, is the typical answer I get. But there are actually a trillion other cells in the brain. They're known as glia, which is Latin for glue–which gives you an idea of how little scientists have thought of them. But without glia, our brains would be useless. Scientists don't yet really understand all the things that glia do for us, but it looks as if they d

The Index of Banned Words

Over the past week I held my first real class, teaching a roomful of students writing about science on Appledore Island (along with a few ornithological auditors, shown in this picture of my classroom). They put up with a relentless schedule of researching and writing and ended up with some excellent pieces about everything from robot sharks to the right way to hold a warbler in your hand. I'll be posting the fruits of their labors in a couple days at Science on Shoals.

Along the way, we talked a

Where Am I? [Science Tattoo]

Patrick, a research specialist in a computational memory lab, writes,

Yesterday, I got my first science tattoo — and first tattoo period — taking inspiration from you and the lovely people in the Science Tattoo Emporium.

Mine is a hippocampal neuron: specifically, a pyramidal cell found in area CA1. It's been implicated in spatial memory, which is something my lab works on. (In rodent EEG, hippocampal "place response" has been seen in this type of neuron.)  But more than that, I find it to be one

Beach Teacher

Now these are good office hours. I'm sitting in front of a big tide pool on a hot day at Appledore Island. My children are playing some Byzantine  game involving princesses on the raft in the middle of the pool. A student of mine has just walked passed me, snorkel and goggles in hand. "I've just sent you an outline for my project, and I'm going to take a break," she says. As she floats off to gaze at the algae and the crabs, I use the awesome wireless on this island to check my email The outline

Parasite Island and Hagfish Knots

We're three days into the science writing class here at Shoals Marine Laboratory, and the exhaustion and enlightenment are neck and neck.

Monday we arrived on Appledore Island and settled in among the squawking herring gulls, which grudgingly walk out of our way as we walk by, as if to say, it's our island. Tuesday morning we marched out to the northern edge of the island to learn about the intertidal zone, the place where the ocean meets land in necklace of pools and rocks battered by waves and

Book [P]review: For The Scientist

On August 11, 1999–ten years ago tomorrow–the State Board of Education in Kansas voted to take evolution out of the state's science curriculum.

This came as quite a shock to a lot of biologists I spoke to at the time. A lot of them couldn't understand how it have happened. Some decided to get together to plan what to do in response. With lightning-fast reflexes, a meeting was arranged over a year later. Representatives from major scientific societies gathered to make a plan. They invited a number

Far Away, But Not Out of Radio's Reach

We arrived on Appledore Island this afternoon, which is drenched in sunshine and heat. The gulls are screaming and the students are busy reading up on tidal pools (or, as I was informed at dinner, the intertidal) in advance of our journey tomorrow. But despite the fact that New Hampshire is just a strip on the horizon, the email and the cell phones work here, and this evening I was asked to talk on the radio tomorrow about my recent article on global warming and evolution. I'll be on the Leonard