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Posts by this author
July 10, 2006
A couple readers have emailed me asking what I think of the recent Nature article on blogs by scientists. I agree with Revere that it's great that Nature (and specifically, Nature reporter Declan Butler) is paying such close attention to blogs in science. The top 50 list they provide is a good…
July 10, 2006
I just want to make one thing clear. When Ann Coulter talks about her Giant Raccoon Flatulence Theory, she's talking about me. Don't let anyone else tell you that they are a giant flatulent raccoon. They're all just a bunch of wannabes. For I am the One True Giant Flatulent Raccoon.
Allow me to…
July 3, 2006
In today's New York Times I have an article about the discovery of a vast graveyard of dodo fossils. The fossils date back an estimated 3,000 years. Dodo fossils are exquisitely rare, and so it's quite something to find an entire assemblage of them. But as the leader of the expedition that found…
June 26, 2006
Last night I took the ferry across Long Island Sound to spend the day in Stony Brook at Evolution 2006, the joint annual meeting of American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists. About 1500 scientists were there, and there were…
June 21, 2006
It's been twenty months now since scientists reported discovering fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores belonging to a three-foot-tall hominid with a brain the size of a chimp that lived recently as 12,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis, as this hominid was dubbed, has inspired two clashing…
June 19, 2006
Next time I go to the doctor, I think I'll get him to give me a test for Toxoplasma. Fifty million Americans have the parasite, so I wouldn't be the first. And if I was carrying it around in my head, that might explain why it's so fascinating to me.
I first encountered the strange ways of this…
June 17, 2006
Two hundred thousand years ago or thereabouts, an African lion killed someone. Along with a meal, the big cat got a wicked stomachache. Today a record of that unfortunate death still survives, in the bacteria that make big cats sick.
The trail of this strange story starts in the 1980s, when…
June 15, 2006
A bunch of good reviews on natural selection in humans are coming out, reflecting the explosion of research on how evolution has shaped our genome. See here and here. Today in Science another good one is out. What sets this one apart from the others is that it comes with a slide show with audio…
June 14, 2006
The other day I was interviewed on KUCI-FM in Irvine, California, about the evolution of bacteria in yogurt. You can listen to the podcast here.
June 14, 2006
Scientists have figured out many ways to study the origin of species. They can build evoluitonary trees, to see how species descend from a common ancestor. They can survey islands or mountains or lakes to see how ecological conditions foster the rise of new species. They can look for fossils that…
June 9, 2006
Greetings. As I bring in my html luggage and unpack, let me stop for a moment to introduce myself and this blog.
I'm a science writer. I started out at Discover, where I ended up as a senior editor before heading out into the freelance world in 1999. Since then I've written for a number of…
June 9, 2006
When we speak of the Hobbit, let us not forget her tools.
Last year, scientists reported discovering fossils of a three-foot-tall hominid that they named Homo floresiensis, and which I can't keep myself from calling the Hobbit. Its bones turned up in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores,…
May 29, 2006
Usually when you hear about the rapid evolution of bacteria, the story is typically some grim tale of antibiotic resistance or the emergence of some pathogen once restricted to animals. Here's a nicer narrative, but no less instructive. In tomorrow's New York Times I have an article about yogurt,…
May 25, 2006
If you're in the neighborhood of Woods Hole, Mass., let me invite you to my talk on Friday, June 9 at the Marine Biological Laboratory. I'll be talking about human evolution, but given that I'll be at the Marine Biological Laboratory, I figure I'll include some discussion of the marine biology in…
May 23, 2006
Over the past few months I've been working on a book on Escherichia coli (more on that later). To get a feel for how scientists work with the bug, I've been spending some time at the lab of Paul Turner at Yale. He sets up experiments to observe microbes evolve. His lab is full of freezers and…
May 23, 2006
Oliver Morton, science writer and Nature news editor, is blogging after a long hiatus at MainlyMartian. He's reporting from the Synthetic Biology 2.0 meeting in Berkeley. Check it out.
Update: Actually, you may want to check out the cross-posting at Nature's blogs. Same entries, with comments.
May 22, 2006
In tomorrow's New York Times I have an article about the origin of species--or rather, blocking the origin of species. The evolution of a new species can be a drawn out process, taking thousands or millions of years. First populations begin to diverge from each other. Later, those populations may…
May 18, 2006
It's been a little over a year and a half now since scientists announced the disocvery of the most controversial fossil in the field of human origins: Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit. Scientists found bones of a dimunitive hominid on the Indonesian island of Flores, and estimated that it lived…
May 17, 2006
Nothing gets the blood boiling like a manimal. For many people, the idea of breaching the human species barrier--to mingle our biology with that of an animal--seems like a supreme affront to the moral order. In his January state of the union address, President Bush called for a ban on "creating…
May 16, 2006
A few days ago I explained how an evolutionary change in our hominid ancestors could explain a spectacular surprise failure of a clinical drug trial. At last, I see that the paper is now online
May 16, 2006
The BBC has a short article on the first DNA isolated from a Neanderthal's nucleus. (Previous efforts have gotten DNA from their mitochondria, which are small energy-generating organelles.) The results, announced at a meeting, are the fruits of a new method for extracting genetic information from…
May 15, 2006
If you keep a vegetable garden, there's a fair chance you'll encounter a grisly sight this summer. Some poor caterpillar will be clutching a leaf, with the pupae of parasitic wasps sprouting off its back. It has just died in a most grotesque way. A wasp has zeroed in on the caterpillar and injected…
May 11, 2006
Viruses have a special place at the Loom--they're ubiquitous and have some pretty profound influences on the evolution of their hosts (including us). But a French scientist named Patrick Forterre wants to take it up a notch. He's arguing that our very DNA is the creation of viruses some four…
May 10, 2006
In case you were worrying that life on Earth would be wiped out by a catastrophic burst of gamma rays, rest easy. It turns out that our galaxy may not be a very good source of gamma ray bursts. I found this particularly interesting given recent speculation that gamma rays bursts might have…
May 8, 2006
For those interested in Tiktaalik, the marvelous new transitional fossil of a fish with limbs, check out this new essay from Neil Shubin, one of the fossil's discoverers.
May 5, 2006
It's always great to hear senior scientists talk about the bad old days, when one computer could fill an entire room and no one could say what genes were made of. Eric Kandel of Columbia has been studying memory since the 1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work. These days he's…
May 3, 2006
X-Men may be closer than you think | CNET News.com
I suspect all science writers have had the unhappy experience sooner or later of busting their butts to translate tough science into clear writing, only to have a headline writer top it off with a load of nonsense.
For more on the unhappy collision…
May 2, 2006
In March, six men entered a London hospital to receive an experimental drug. The men were volunteers, and the drug--a potential treatment for arthritis and leukemia--appeared from animal tests to be safe. But within minutes of the first round of doses, there was trouble. The men complained of…
May 1, 2006
Today I've got an article in the New York Times about the report in Nature that starlings can recognize syntax-like patterns in songs, and what that might mean--if anything--for the evolution of language. The blogs have been buzzing about the study since it came out on Wednesday, with the Language…
May 1, 2006
The Loom gathered a bit of dust over the past couple weeks as I grappled with another round of deadlines for work that actually pays the mortgage. Life should now get relaxed enough for more blogging, I hope--starting this evening. And as the articles I've been working on come out in the next few…