My recent post about a striking new experiment in evolution (E. coli evolving the ability to eat a new kind of food) is still drawing lots of commenters and links. Very cool! Not so cool are the claims that this experiment is evidence of creationism, made by people who have not actually read the paper itself. Unfortunately, the paper is behind a subscription wall at the journal. Fortunately, the scientists have posted it on their own web site (pdf link). So go, read, and digest.

I’m also hoping that Zachary Blount, the grad student who pored over the trillions of E. coli in this experiment, will have time to respond to the many comments in the next few days. Stay tuned.

Continue reading “A New Step In Evolution, Cont.: Read the Paper” →

Chad writes, “Based on Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ape_skeletons.png

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

Originally published June 13, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Craig writes:

“I teach English at a community college in Kansas City. My tattoo is attached. You might wonder why I am sending a tattoo of a sailing ship to you. That’s not just any ship: it is the Beagle, in a famous image as it anchored off of the Galapagos. Darwin has long been one of my main intellectual heroes. In addition, I do teach science (evolution and climate change at various times) in writing classes because the “debates” about each represent much that is wrong with public discourse today and because we have a theme of informed citizenship in those classes; it is impossible to be an informed citizen without some understanding of what science is and how it works. For both of those reasons, teaching science in college writing classes is both relevant and very interesting”

Continue reading “Voyaging” →

“I was born with a decent size hole in my heart and my parents were told that it would eventually go away with time. It didn’t, and progressed into irregular beating and cardiac arrhythmia. Finally, when I was 18, my doctor noticed that the sound of my heart had changed and that she didn’t think it was functioning the way it should be. I went to a specialist and he determined that the AV node was blocked and that my heart was only beating half of what it should be. I got a pacemaker on December 23, 2003 when I was just 18. A couple years later, as a Christmas gift, my fiance paid for me to get the medical symbol for the pacemaker tattooed on my upper right wrist.”

Continue reading “Beats a Medical Bracelet” →

The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what’s called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Science writer Carl Zimmer took that reductionist approach and applied it to a pretty big issue: life itself. For Zimmer, the system that serves as a model of all life, and of humanity’s often uncomfortable relationship to it, is the unprepossessing gut bacteria, Escherischia coli. Covering all of life is a big task, and Zimmer made the challenge that much harder on himself by choosing to target the book to a general audience. Still, he handles the challenge extraordinarily well.

Continue reading “Microcosm: Ars Technica feature, and more podcasts” →