Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 90
June 4, 2010
Time to Vote For 3 Quarks Daily's Science Prize
Thanks to everyone who nominated posts from the Loom for 3 Quarks Daily's Science Prize. Now it's time to vote!
If you need some background information on the prize, go here. You can then peruse the list of nominated posts here. Great stuff abounds, so you won't hurt my feelings if you decide someone else's post is the best! When you're ready, vote here. The deadline is June 7, 11:59 PM eastern time.
The top 20 vote-getting posts will then be judged by the folks at 3 Quarks Daily, who will...
June 3, 2010
And Have You Ever Met This Gentleman Before? No, Sir, I Have Not.
This morning I talked with Nobel-prize-winning physicist John Mather and a few dozen high school students from New York, Kansas, Florida, and Ghana at the World Science Festival. In a testament to the maturity of videoconferencing technology, we actually had a fantastic conversation, which consisted in large part of the students peppering Mather about cosmology, his area of expertise. I remember well being 14 and thinking to myself, "So…wait a minute…if the universe is expanding, what's it...
June 2, 2010
Einstein's Brain, Einstein's Glia
NPR's Jon Hamilton has a nice piece on Einstein's brain, and what might have made it special. The difference doesn't seem to have to do with its neurons, but with the other cells of the brain, the glia. I wrote about the glia–what I called the dark matter of the brain–in this Discover column last fall.
June 1, 2010
Bacteria in the Greenhouse
Bacteria and other microbes suck up and blast out vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Over at Yale Environment 360, I take a look at how they will behave in a world warming up as we inject carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Will they draw down some of the extra CO2, or will the heat spur them to spew out more? Or both? The answer isn't clear yet, but it's important. After all, it's a microbial planet, and we just live on it. Check it out.
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May 29, 2010
Stomping Through the Permian [Science Tattoo]
Mandy writes, "I am actually a microbiologist, but my side interest is the trilobite. I went in thinking I'd just get a small black outline of a trilobite, and the tattoo artist was so excited that I wanted a trilobite, and insisted on designing something more complicated for me. So attached is a photo of my right foot. It's like a pet trilobite that follows me everywhere."
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Up for Discussion: Neanderthals and Synthetic Genomes
Two of my favorite bloggers, John Hawks and Christina Agapakis, talk about the big genome news of recent weeks on Bloggingheads. Gets technical, but in a good way!
May 26, 2010
3 Quarks Daily Prize in Science: Nominations Are Open
The folks at 3 Quarks Daily are taking nominations for their second annual Prize in Science. The judge this year will be Richard Dawkins.
Here are the details for how to nominate a blog post from the past year, written after May 23, 2009. The deadline is May 31.
Some Loom readers have already nominated some posts–thanks! Here are a few other of my favorites…
A Blog Incubator
A group of new blogs have launched at NYU's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program. In my capacity as Visiting Scholar there, I helped some of the students think through how to work blogs into their training at NYU. Mainly, I urged them to think about how to not be boring. I suggested they set up blogs that they themselves would actually want to write, and that weren't like a lot of other blogs.
And they did! Kids these days.
So check out the whole blog roll, and offer your...
May 25, 2010
Where To Find Me At the American Society for Microbiology
If you're at ASM, I just want to let you know I'll be at the ASM Press Bookstore from 1 pm to 2 pm on Wednesday. The bookstore is on the far right end of the lobby as you're standing in front of the convention center. If you want to talk about the things I'll be discussing this afternoon at 5:30 pm, come by. Also, ASM Press has signed copies of Microcosm for sale. See you there!
Ultramarathon blogging!
Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist, is turning out to be a blogger to follow. He's down in the Delaware Bay right now, studying some of the birds that are migrating unbelievable distances (see my story in today's Times). Unfortunately, the birds are having a rough time because we're taking away the food they need to power their long-haul flights: horseshoe crab eggs. Check it out.
