Damon writes, “This distribution of ‘isotopic peaks’ on my calf is what a peptide of mass 2,005 Daltons looks like in a high-resolution mass spectrometer. That peak distribution is due to the relative abundance of the different isotopes of the elements that make up peptides, particularly carbon. 2005 is the year I got married and also the year I gave the corporate world the boot in favor of science. I wonder if there are any more proteomics tattoos out there….”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

Originally published January 28, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Dinosaurs in color! I’ve got a story tomorrow in The New York Times on scientists who are using the microscopic structure of dinosaur feathers to figure out their colors.

My new article is just one chapter in a multi-part story. Back in September, I wrote in the Times about how paleontologists developed this method and used it to determine the color of a 47-million-year-old bird feather. On the blog, I promised you here to stay tuned, and now here we are.

The new paper is important, but, as I note in the article, the scientists analyzed a single sample from each fossil. They didn’t look at a large number of samples from a single specimen. Such an analysis could give a broader picture of the color pattern of a dinosaur.

Again, you may guess where this is going. And so, again, stay tuned…

[Update: Times link fixed]

Originally published January 27, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

I’ve been following the research of primatologist Frans de Waal on peacemaking among primates for a long time. Earlier this month I finally got to meet him in New York, where we had a conversation about his new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society.

I’ve embedded the first of a series of excerpts you can watch on YouTube. You can find all the excerpts here.

Originally published January 26, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

If you’ve never played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, take a trip to the Oracle of Bacon, where you can see how far any actor is from Bacon in the Hollywood movie network.

And once you’ve played that game, check out my new article at Yale Environment 360 to see how ecosystems are a lot like Hollywood, at least when it comes to networking.

For more on ecological network theory, check out Jordi Bascompte’s web site.

Originally published January 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Here’s a talk I just gave on Big Think–about viruses, synthetic biology, and tapeworms that carry my name. The sound quality isn’t as good as I’d like, but I hope the words make up for it.

Originally published January 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.