Tracks and Traces 04.12.10

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Yesterday was a good day as far as books went; I read G.G. Simpson's Splendid Isolation from cover-to-cover, two review copies arrived in the mail, and a book I've long been wanting to read also arrived at my door. That book is Johannes Weigelt's Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and their…
Well son/daughter, their decomposing carcasses bloat up, sink to the deep, dark ocean floor, where other animals rip away their flesh and consume their bones*. It may be a whole week of about vertebrates but I had to balance it out with a whale's tale of death and decomposition in which at…
Recently, at events for my book, I sometimes find myself describing the gas carbon monoxide as a favorite poison. "It's just so efficient," I'll joke. "And I like things that work." In an academic sense, I do respectfully admire carbon monoxide's simplicity (a carbon atom + an oxygen atom) and the…
Scorpion Venom With Nanoparticles Slows Spread Of Brain Cancer: By combining nanoparticles with a scorpion venom compound already being investigated for treating brain cancer, University of Washington researchers found they could cut the spread of cancerous cells by 98 percent, compared to 45…