Meredith Palmer writes, “I am currently working on Guam studying the invasive Brown Tree Snake. I graduated with my B.A. in Zoology in 2011 and have spent the last year or so in Africa studying large mammals, in the Caribbean examining guppy evolution, and in Canada digging up dinosaurs. And now I find myself in the Pacific! The plan, however, is to attend graduate school next fall. Although I majored in zoology, I always had an interested in paleontology born out of cold, rainy childhood summers spent cracking shale in New England with my geologist parents. Dicranurus is one of my favorite trilobite species, and the design is modeled after scientific plates in the publications of Barrande, a Boehmian paleontologist from the 1800s.”

Barrande’s beautiful illustrations are posted on the Smithsonian’s web site. For more on the glorious vanished trilobites, visit A Guide to the Order of the Trilobites.

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here and in Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

Originally published January 20, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

This week the FDA announced that they were approving a new kin

Originally published January 17, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

d of flu vaccine. Nestled in the articles was an odd fact: unlike traditional flu vaccines, the new kind, called Flublok, is produced by the cells of insects.

This is the kind of detail that you might skim over without giving it a thought. If you did pause to ponder, you might be puzzled: how could insects possibly make a vaccine against viruses that infect humans? The answer may surprise you. To make vaccines, scientists are tapping into a battle between viruses and insects that’s raging in forests and fields and backyards all around us. It’s an important lesson in how to find new ideas in biotechnology: first, leave biologists free to explore the weirdest corners of nature they can find.

Continue reading “Viruses That Make Zombies and Vaccines” →

The soot we loft into the sky is a remarkably mysterious player in the climate game. At Yale Environment 360, I report on the most comprehensive study yet of soot, which reveals that it’s trapping huge amounts of heat. Yet getting rid of all the soot we put in the atmosphere wouldn’t change the climate much. Check out my piece for the solution to that paradox.

Originally published January 17, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

About 100,000 people die each year in the United States from infections they pick up in hospitals. Even the best hospitals in the country are not exempt from this disaster, and it’s getting worse: the bacteria that are attacking patients are becoming frighteningly resistant to antibiotics. Some are becoming resistant to everything doctors can throw at them.

I recently went to Bethesda, Maryland, to visit doctors who struggled with one of these outbreaks at the NIH Clinical Center, one of the country’s premiere research hospitals. Most hospitals stay pretty quiet about their outbreaks, but the Clinical Center staff was far more transparent. They were willing to take me around the hospital as they described their struggles to stop the bacteria, called KPC, as it crept mysteriously from patient to patient and from ward to ward. Continue reading “Mutants: A Story About Tracking A Hospital Killer” →