Author: Matt Kristoffersen
This turned out out be a busy news week. Here are three stories I wrote for the Times.
1. On Monday I wrote about “global greening.” That’s the increase in photosynthesis spurred by all the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the atmosphere. It may sound like a lovely thing, but an expert on global greening I interviewed says it’s no reason to celebrate–or to stop looking for a way to fight climate change. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, August 3, 2018”
A number of scientists hope that GM foods can be part of the solution to feeding the world, as the population grows and climate change puts crops under stress. But GM crops also inspire fierce opposition, because many people worry that they may be harmful to the environment or human health.
In the past few years, scientists have begun using CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies to alter the DNA of crops. This week, the top court in the European Union ruled that these crops should be considered GMOs, and thus be subject to the same tight regulations that cover crops produced by older methods. Except for methods that are really old… Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 29, 2018”
1. This afternoon, I’ll be on Science Friday starting about 3 pm ET. Ira Flatow and I will talk about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh. Catch us on the radio, or listen live online.
2. If you want to catch me in pixel form, I’ll be on BookTV on C-SPAN on Sunday at 5 pm ET. They’ll be broadcasting a recent conversation I had at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science with anthropologist Chip Colwell in front of a live audience.
3. The Aspen Ideas Festival posted the audio of the book talk I gave for them last month. Listen here. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 20, 2018”
We know that our ancestors diverged from other apes in Africa. And for millions of years that’s where they remained. But at some point hominins expanded to other continents, in a series of waves that included our own species roughly 70,000 years ago.
When was the first trip out? The clearest answer to that question would come from skeletons. The oldest skeletons of hominins yet found outside of Africa are about 1.7 million years old, found in the republic of Georgia. But this week, a team of researchers who have worked for years digging into a giant gulley in China, say they have found tools as old as 2.1 million years. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 13, 2018”
I’m back from the long journey west. Since I last wrote, there’s been more news about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh.
1. In the Wall Street Journal, William Saletan gets it—
“Nature’s laws are violated all the time, and the cardinal violator is nature itself. This is the paradox that Carl Zimmer explores in She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. Mr. Zimmer, a New York Times science columnist and author, is careful and well-informed. So when he says that research is overturning things you were taught in biology classes, he’s worth heeding. Acquired traits can be inherited. Biological time can turn backward. And monsters are real.” Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, June 29, 2018”