Stretching the Seasons

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FLOWERS BLOOMING IN COLORADO. PHOTO BY DAVID INOUYE

Across much of the Northern Hemisphere, the land is now greening up. The first signs of spring are arriving earlier with each passing decade, thanks to the changes we’ve already made to the world’s climate. But, as I write in my “Matter” column this week in the New York Times, our alteration of the seasons is proving to be more extensive and complex than previously thought. It’s important to figure out how we’re changing the seasons today, because we will likely be wreaking far more dramatic changes in decades to come. Check it out. Continue reading “Stretching the Seasons” →

Springing Forward, and Its Consequences

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The New York Times, April 23, 2014

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This is a busy time of year for Richard B. Primack, a biologist at Boston University. He and his colleagues survey the plants growing around Concord, Mass., recording the first day they send up flowers and leaves.

Compared to the last five springs, things are pretty slow right now around Concord, in large part because of the relatively cold winter and chilly March.

But Dr. Primack wouldn’t call this a late spring. “It’s just much later compared to our recent memories of spring,” he said.

Continue reading “Springing Forward, and Its Consequences” →

The Wisdom of (Little) Crowds

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PHOTO BY MAURICIO HANDLER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

In 1785, A French mathematician named Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat (known as Marquis de Condorcet) used statistics to champion democracy.

Democracies are based on the collective decisions of large groups of people. But citizens aren’t experts on every topic, and so they may be prone to errors in the choices they make. And yet, Condorcet argued, it’s possible for a group of error-prone decision-makers to be surprisingly good at picking the best choice. Continue reading “The Wisdom of (Little) Crowds” →

Weekend Reading: The Long Road to Ancient DNA, and Gene-Stealing Ferns

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The Natural History Museum London
REPLICA OF NEANDERTHAL SKULL

I’ve been traveling again this week, which makes blogging a challenge. But I still can still offer a couple pieces of reading for your weekend diversion.

–Over the years, I’ve written many articles about the amazing work of Svante Paabo, who has pioneered methods for salvaging ancient DNA from fossils. (Here’s my most recent piece, on the entire genome of a Neanderthal extracted from a toe bone.)

The New York Times Book Review asked me to read Paabo’s new memoir, Neanderthal Man. Here’s my review. As I note in the piece, memoirs by scientists are a tricky genre. Very often, scientists want to delve into fine detail about their research, while tossing off frustratingly fragmented bits about their personal lives. As I was reading Neanderthal Man and getting a bit frustrated by fleeting references to a secret father and such, I asked people on Twitter about their favorite memoir by a scientist. I Storified the ensuing conversation here. Continue reading “Weekend Reading: The Long Road to Ancient DNA, and Gene-Stealing Ferns” →

Missing Links

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, April 18, 2014

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In the summer of 1981, a Swedish graduate student named Svante Paabo filled a laboratory at the University of Uppsala with the stench of rotting liver. Paabo was supposed to be studying viruses, but he had become secretly obsessed with a more exotic line of research: extracting DNA from Egyptian mummies. No one at the time had any idea if the desiccated flesh of pharaohs still contained any genetic material, so Paabo decided to run an experiment. He bought a piece of calf’s liver and put it in a lab oven at about 120 degrees for a few days to approximate mummification. In the dried, blackened lump of meat, he succeeded in finding scattered fragments of DNA.

Continue reading “Missing Links” →