Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 86
July 19, 2010
Infecting Minds: My Lecture at the American Society for Microbiology
I gave a talk at the President's Forum at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in May about how I go about telling stories about science. The folks at ASM have done some slick video editing and posted the lecture at their site, where you can also download it in various formats. Or just watch it in the embedded player below. In my lecture, I talk about getting out of bunkers and jumping chasms, as well as the trouble parasites can get you into on a blind date.
BORA!
[image error]The force of blog nature known as BORA! has decided he does not like the Pepsi aftertaste and is leaving Scienceblogs. I'm just back from a wonderfully rain-soaked vacation in Ireland, so I'm scrambling to get back up to speed. I won't update my post on the scienceblogs diaspora till this afternoon. But in the meantime, read the epic farewell from BORA!
From the Vault: Us and Them Among the Slime Molds
[An old post I'm fond of]
Scoop up some dirt, and you'll probably wind up with some slime mold. Many species go by the common name of slime mold, but the ones scientists know best belong to the genus Dictyostelium. They are amoebae, and for the most part they live the life of a rugged individualist. Each slime mold prowls through the soil, searching for bacteria which it engulfs and digests. After gorging itself sufficiently, it divides in two, and the new pair go their separate...
July 18, 2010
A Fossil Emblem [Science Tattoo]
Maria, a paleontologist, writes, "Archaeopteryx, to me, represents a beautiful example of a transition fossil and of evolution in general, showing characters that both
dinosaurs and birds share."
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
July 17, 2010
Love of Logic [Science Tattoo]
Melissa writes,
I have a mathematical tattoo on my left forearm. It's in Frege's notation (from "Grundgesetze der Arithmetik"), which was one of the first modern logical notations. If it were written on a flat surface, it would start with the short vertical line, which is the assertion sign. What it asserts is: If {Cantor's theorem} then {heart}.
Cantor's Theorem says that the power set of any set is strictly larger than the set itself. (The power set of a set is the set of all its subsets....
From the Vault: Clint Is Dead, Long Live Clint!
[A post from 2005 I'm fond of]
[image error]Clint, the chimpanzee in this picture, died several months ago at a relatively young age of 24. But part of him lives on. Scientists chose him–or rather, his DNA–as the subject of their first attempt to sequence a complete chimpanzee genome. In the new issue of Nature, they've unveiled their first complete draft, and already Clint's legacy has offered some awesome insights into our own evolution.
The editors of Nature have dedicated a sprawling space in the...
July 16, 2010
From the Vault: What's A Gene For?
[An old post from 2005 I'm fond of]
There was a time not that long ago when sequencing a single gene would be hailed as a scientific milestone. But then came a series of breakthroughs that sped up the process: clever ideas for how to cut up genes and rapidly identify the fragments, the design of robots that could do this work twenty-four hours a day, and powerful computers programmed to make sense of the results. Instead of single genes, entire genomes began to be sequenced. This year marks...
The Quivering Brain [Science Tattoo]
Kristin writes,
"This is a rendition of Andreas Vesalius' 'The Quivering Brain.' I admired many of his anatomy studies in art school, as I spent fifteen years as a painter, but I was always a little more interested in science than art. I even considered a career as a medical illustrator at one point.
Using science as artistic reference and researching for a painting was my favorite part of painting. Actually, it was the only thing I really enjoyed. It took me many years to realize this. ...
July 15, 2010
From the Vault: Love Darts In the Backyard
[An old post I'm fond of]
[image error]Spring is finally slinking into the northeast, and the backyard wildlife here is shaking off the winter torpor. Our oldest daughter, Charlotte, is now old enough to be curious about this biological exuberence. She likes to tell stories about little subterranean families of earthworm mommies and grub daddies, cram grapes in her cheeks in imitation of the chipmunks, and ask again and again about where the birds spend Christmas. This is, of course, hog heaven for a...
The Net of Science [Science Tattoo]
Gabriel writes, "I'm a Brazilian biologist. I had the idea of tattooing a neural net as a form of tribute to scientific, logical thinking and the rational understanding of the world."
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
