Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 94

Graduating Into Entropy [Science Tattoo]

Ivanka writes,

I got this last week and as I'm sure you know, it's the second law of thermodynamics (the original equation, by Clausius) before -N even represented entropy. This is a strange story, because I'm not a physics or math major, I'm a female philosophy person.

I really do love physics though, and I'm about to leave my home country and all my undergrad friends behind and go and do my MSc at LSE. So the sentiment behind this is that now, after undergrad, we begin to disseminate...

The Companion Molecule [Science Tattoos]

Scicurious, a blogger at Neurotopia with a PhD in physiology, writes,

The molecule is caffeine, and the tattoo itself was designed by artist Glendon Mellow of The Flying Trilobite .  I got it to celebrate my PhD.

Why caffeine, you ask?

1) I had a friend once tell me that my friendship was like a hot cup of coffee.  Warm, vivacious, stimulating, and comforting.  It was one of the best compliments I ever received.

2) I have spent the last six years of my life studying drugs in various forms. ...

A Day Among the Genomes

What will the world be like when your genome sequence costs less than a cell phone? A couple days ago I went to Cambridge, Mass. to find out.

The occasion was a meeting called "Genome, Environments, and Traits," or GET for short. The history of the meeting is in the upper ranks of my list of meetings with strange histories. In 2006, the Harvard geneticist George Church (arguably the smartest, most influential biologist you never heard of) decided to launch a new kind of human genome project...

Further Dinosaur Featherosity

I'm on the road today, so I don't have time to explain the fascinating science behind this freaky new picture of feathered dinosaurs young and old. So let me just direct your attention to fellow D-blogger, Ed Yong, and Nature's Janet Fang for more.

[Image by Xing Lida and Song Qijin:]

Blood Genes Where There Is No Blood

In tomorrow's New York Times, I take a look at a new way of finding disease-related genes: search their ancient evolutionary history. Scientists can find genes involved in blood vessel growth in yeast–which have no blood. They can find genes that help build human embryos in plants, where they sense gravity. It's a twist on a twist on Darwin's great insights descent with modification. And I'm pleased to see that University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, a tough audience if...

Why Madagascar's Tapeworms Matter–To You

Everything is connected. And when I say everything, I include you, dear reader, and the tapeworms of Madagascar. They carry a hidden history of our entire species.

I'm sure we'd all prefer that there was no such connection. Tapeworm are not just gross, but they are pretty much the polar opposite of the human existence. They have no brain. They have no eyes. They lack mouths and guts, having turned their body inside out, absorbing food through its surface. Most of their hideously long body is m...

On Growth and Ink [Science Tattoo]

Alex, a graduate student studying human biology and evolution, writes, "As an undergraduate at I was fortunate enough to study On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Thompson. His synthesis of mathematics, classics and biology was an inspiration to me, and drove me to pursue science as a career. Though I am now studying to be a paleoanthropologist, my tattoo of an (idealized) ammonite fossil is a reminder to me of the material and mathematical processes behind all living things. Plus extinct...

Steven Johnson on Big Business Semiotics

Here's a lecture Steven Johnson gave last night at Columbia about the future of text. (Steven has a transcript here.) Lo and behold, that degree in semiotics twenty years ago makes a lot of sense now!

The Things You Learn When Your Wife Becomes A Gardener

I didn't know Oliver Wendell Holmes thought the odors of boxwoods "carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past." I didn't know that the necks of daffodils bulge when their ova are fertilized. At least, I didn't know such things before my wife Grace started to garden, and then to chronicle her experiences in a new blog. I think it's delightful, but don't take my spousal word for it–check it out!

Friday at Yale: A Talk About Science and the Media

Attention, people of Yale, New Haven, and environs! I will be giving a talk Friday called "Science and the Media: A Match Made in Heaven, or a Cosmic Train Wreck?"

I'll offer my bipolar musings on the once and future state of science journalism. It's free and open to the public

It's sponsored by the Yale Training Program in Biophysics, the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics, and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, April 23, 2010 4:00 PM