One day a few years ago, I got an email from someone who called himself Davis.
hey carl,
i have 2 do a report on the book parasite rex. and i kind of need help on chapter 4 i dont really get it! can u please help me?
thank you alot
your pal,
Davis
Continue reading “An Open Letter to Science Students and Science Teachers”
The New York Times, May 30, 2013
In the hearts of evolutionary biologists, mountains occupy a special place. It’s not just their physical majesty: mountains also have an unmatched power to drive human evolution. Starting tens of thousands of years ago, people moved to high altitudes, and there they experienced natural selection that has reworked their biology.
“This is the most extreme example in humans that you can find,” said Rasmus Nielsen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
Humans have adapted to mountainous environments just as Charles Darwin predicted. To discover how this occurred, scientists are now examining the DNA of people who scaled mountains in different parts of the world.
Continue reading “Mountain Populations Offer Clues to Human Evolution”
Humans have spread across the planet, settling in deserts and marshes and deep forests. They’ve adapted to their new homes, not just culturally but genetically, as natural selection has favored certain genes over others. But nowhere has this adaptation been more intense than at high altitudes–in places like Tibet, the Andes, and the Ethiopian highlands. For my Matter column in the New York Times this week, I look at the latest research on mountain life, and at the lessons it can teach us about evolution in general.
Originally published May 30, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.
I’ll be on HuffPost Live today at 1 pm ET to talk about the new virus that has emerged in the Middle East, known now as MERS-CoV (short for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus).
This virus first came to light last summer. As I wrote here in March, the virus turned out to be a coronavirus, belonging to the same broad lineage of viruses that includes SARS. Like SARS, it appears to have hopped from bats and infects people’s lungs. So far, 44 people have been identified carrying the virus, and 24 have died. Continue reading “Today at 1 pm ET: Live Discussion About the New Virus MERS”
The New York Times, May 23, 2013
With the unofficial start of summer on Monday, many people will get up close and personal with the element that carries 17 protons.
I speak, of course, of chlorine.
Over the next few months, chlorine will ensure that countless swimming pools don’t turn into microbe-choked petri dishes. That’s only one of many uses we’ve found for the element. We sprinkle it on our food as table salt — a k a sodium chloride. We pump water through pipes made of polyvinyl chloride. Perchlorate, a combination of chlorine and oxygen atoms, fuels rockets and ignites fireworks.
Continue reading “Chlorine, Swimming Pool Helper, Has a Checkered Past”