Friday’s Elk, February 12, 2016

Greetings–

My first cold of the season slowed down this week’s newsletter. Between the sniffles, here we go:

Viruses and Birth Defects

As Zika virus spreads through the Western Hemisphere, scientists are investigating whether it’s responsible for a burst of birth defects in Brazil, known as microcephaly. In this week’s Science Times section of the New York Times, I wrote about other viruses, like rubella and cytomegalovirus, that can also harm a fetusif they infect a pregnant woman. Those lesser-known are providing a guide for research on Zika–but we still don’t understand a lot of their biology.

I Love the Smell of Leopards in the Morning

I’ve written a lot about parasites over the years, ever since I wrote a book about them. But of all those parasites, the one I’ve written the most about is Toxoplasma. (Here are a few articles from 2006, 2011 2012, 2013, and 2014.) The science keeps moving forward, and so there’s more to write. To understand how Toxoplasma alters our minds, scientists want to understand its evolutionary history. To that end, scientists recently ran a study on Toxoplasma-exposed chimpanzees. It’s possible that the parasite makes them less fearful of leopards–which can serve as Toxoplasma’s final host. I wrote about the research this week in my Matter column for the Times. Check it out.

Dinosaur Plumage

I met the photographer Robert Clark a few years ago when we worked together in China on a story for National Geographic about the origin of feathers. Clark went on to take a staggering number of photographs of gorgeous feathers all over the world. Now he’s put them together in a book, for which I’ve written a preface. It comes out in April. You can pre-order it now.

The Talks
June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here’s the meeting site.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

New!–> January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival

The End
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Best wishes, Carl