Susan Perkins at the American Museum of Natural History is almost done with a truly heroic feat: overseeing a blog that features a new parasite every day in 2010. As we glide towards the end of the year, she’s launched “The Twelve Parasites of Christmas.” So far, mistletoe (that botanical equivalent of a tapeworm!), two turtle doves (and their blood parasites), and the cauliflower mushroom, bane of Christmas trees. What gifts await us in the next week?

Originally published December 19, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Last month I wrote a piece for the New York Times about what ten scientists are looking forward to in 2011. One of the scientists, Rob Carlson, saw garage stem-cell research in our near future:

“It seems pretty likely within this year someone will show how to go from an adult peripheral blood draw to pluripotent stem cells. It means anyone who wants to try to make stem cells will be able to give it a whirl.”

Carlson took to his own blog to write at more length about what exactly he meant. For one thing, stem cell biohackers may want to think twice before sticking stem cells in their own bodies. They could end up with what Carlson calls DIY tumors. Check it out.

Originally published December 19, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

On Thursday, an excellent crowd turned out, despite the sharp cold weather, to hear me talk about Neanderthals. I managed to get a fairly good recording on my Iphone, and today I melded it with my slides on Imovie, to create a slideshow of the talk. I’ve embedded the Youtube and the Vimeo versions below. Take your pick.

YouTube:

Vimeo:

Originally published December 18, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Over at Psychology Today, I’m in a celebratory mood. It’s been fifty years since Jane Goodall discovered that animals have been making tools. And it’s been downhill ever since. Check it out.

Originally published December 16, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Just a reminder–TODAY at 5 pm, I will be giving a lecture at the Yale Medical School, as part of a series hosted by the Yale Medical Humanities and the Arts Council.

I’ll be talking about some of the eye-popping studies that have come out over the past couple years on the Neanderthals, our enigmatic extinct cousins (and grandparents, in some cases). It might seem an odd fit to talk about Neanderthals at a medical school, but when you consider the medically important genes that Neanderthals carried, suddenly it starts to make sense.

Continue reading “Reminder: The Red-Headed Neanderthal today at 5 pm” →