Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 67

Tomorrow: Synthetic Biology lecture in Manchester, Connecticut

If you live in central Connecticut, please consider coming to my public lecture tomorrow (Wednesday 4/12). It's entitled, "Synthetic Biology: Playing God or Harnessing Nature?" The talk is sponsored by the Connecticut Association of Biology Teachers, the Connecticut Valley Branch of the American Society for Microbiology, and Manchester Community College.

Here are the details:

Where: Manchester Community College, Great Path Academy Building, Community Commons. (Here are directions and maps.)

When: 5:30 pm, Wednesday, April 12

More information here.

Two Happily Infected Hosts!

Steven Barritz (left) and Travis Bautista pose with their brand new copies of the revised edition of Parasite Rex with a new epilogue. I'll be sending them an autographed book plate. If you'd like one, here are the steps:

1. Buy a copy.

2. Email me a picture of yourself with the book (it's marked "with a new epilogue").

3. I'll reply to your email and we'll make arrangements to send you an autographed book plate. (You'll need to cover the cost of the postage and plate, which should be about a buck.)

A note on my ever-expanding social media empire [heh]

I've set up an account at Tumblr. No LOLcats, but assorted images and video that I feel moved to post with little commentary. Renaissance images of the brain, squid eyes, new images of Mercury. That sort of thing.

Tomorrow in Philadelphia: My Talk on the Birth of Our Brain-Centered Age

Greetings, Loominaries of Philadelphia! I will be heading your way to give a talk tomorrow (Thursday) at the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania.

My talk will be entitled, "Soul Made Flesh: The Origin of Our Brain-Centered World." I'll argue, as I did in the eponymous book, that as we grapple with the implications of twenty-first-century neuroscience, we'd do well to cast our minds back 350 years ago, when scientific revolutionaries first discovered that the brain was not a bowl of curds.

The details:

When: Thursday, April 07 2011, 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Location : Silverman Hall, Room 245A, University of Pennsylvania (3400 Chestnut St.)

Contact : info@neuroethics.upenn.edu

[Image: The frontispiece of "The Anatomy of the Brain," reproduced in Soul Made Flesh ]

Tonight in New Haven: Join me and Annie Murphy Paul for a reading

I'm heading into New Haven this evening to take part in The Ordinary Evening Reading Series. Tonight I'll be talking about my upcoming book, A Planet of Viruses, and the writer Annie Murphy Paul will discuss her book Origins, which looks at how our experiences in the womb shape the rest of our lives. Join us at 7 pm tonight in the Mermaid Room at the Anchor Bar, 272 College St.

[Image: New Haven Advocate ]

Outlook: Warm, Grim, Cloudy: My story on global warming and extinctions in tomorrow's NY Times

In tomorrow's New York Times, I take a look into nature's crystal ball. Scientists have long been warning that we may be headed into Earth's sixth mass extinction. But most projections just carry forward the causes of recent extinctions and population plunges (overfishing, hunting, and the like). Global warming is already starting to have an effect on many species–but it's a minor one compared with the full brunt that we may experience in the next century.

I've written in the past about studies scientists have carried out to project what that impact will be like. I decided to revisit the subject after reading a spate of provocative papers and books recently. While the scientists I talked to all agree that global warming could wreak serious havoc on biodiversity in coming decades, they're debating the best way to measure that potential harm, and the best way to work against it. We all crave precision in our forecasts, but biology is so complex that in this case we may well have to live without it. Check it out.

[Image: Photo by DJ-Dwayne/Flickr ]

"Childhood Development: New Issues, New Answers"–A Panel Discussion in Guilford CT on April 26

If you're a parent of a child with a developmental disorder, such as autism, ADHD, or Downs syndrome, you're invited to a panel discussion I'll be moderating in Guilford, CT, on Tuesday, April 26 at 6 pm. The panel will include doctors, researchers, and social workers. We'll be discussing some of the most common questions parents have, on topics such as how developmental disorders are assessed, how early intervention helps children, and how parents themselves can cope with the challenges of caring for a disabled child.

The meeting will be hosted by SARAH, Inc., a non-profit agency serving the intellectually disabled in Connecticut. You can find more details about the meeting and the panelists on their web site here. To attend the meeting, register here. If you'd like to have the panel address a question, you can email the organizers, or post your question on their Facebook page. The event will be taped, and will be broadcast later here in Connecticut. Please spread the word to parents you think might be interested.

The Autographed Bookstore Is Open!

Each time you write a book, your publisher sends over a box of copies. Verging on ten books now, I'm getting overloaded with extras. And so, in the spirit of spring cleaning, I've set up a store on Amazon where you can find autographed, good-to-mint-condition copies of my books at reasonable prices. So please check out http://www.amazon.com/shops/carlzimmer

[Update, Monday 4/4 5 pm: Gah! The orders started coming in, and suddenly Amazon stores seem to have gone down. I hope they'll be back up soon. I'll update. Update, minutes later: And we're back.]

[Image: Photo by Valeshel - Flickr ]

Dr. Kiki's Science Hour video is up. Jackalopes, zombie ants, evolution's odometer, and more!

Brian Malow and I talked yesterday about some of my favorite things on the latest episode of Dr. Kiki's Science Hour–including the evolution odometer. You can watch it on Youtube, or you can head over to Dr. Kiki's Science Hour site to download the video or audio. (The Skype goes berserk briefly, but we get back on track.)

The Human Lake

I went recently to San Francisco to give a talk to a conference of scientists. The scientists were experts in gathering together mountains of biological data—genome sequences, results of experiments and clinical trials—and figuring out how to make them useful: turning them into new diagnostic tests, for example, or a drug for cancer. The invitation was an honor, but a nerve-wracking one. As a journalist, I had no genome scan to offer the audience.

We science writers do have one ace in the hole, though. Instead of being lashed to a lab bench for years, carrying out experiments to illuminate one particular fold in one particular protein, we get to play the field. We travel between different departments, different universities, different countries, and—most important of all—different disciplines. And sometimes we see links between different kinds of science that scientists themselves have missed. Which is why, when I arrived in San Francisco, walked up to the podium, and switched on my computer, I presented my audience with this photograph of a lake.

For the next hour, I tried to convince them that their bodies are a lot like that lake, and ...