This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
Minds of Modern Mathematics. Published by IBM/Eames Office.
Reviewed by Jennifer Ouellette
March 19, 2013
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
Sound Uncovered. By The Exploratorium.
Reviewed by Maggie Koerth-Baker
March 18, 2013
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
March 18, 2013
Each week, we add some new titles of science ebooks to the Library. We will review a selection of them. Here are our newest additions:
Battle at the End of Eden, Amanda R. Martinez
Advances in cloning, stem cell manipulations, and sequencing DNA raise a profound possibility: we might be able to bring some species back from extinction. That’s the subject of my cover story for the April issue of National Geographic, which comes out today, and which you can read here.
This morning I spoke on Morning Edition on National Public Radio. The interview will be archived here.
Later today, I will be giving an introductory talk to an all-day exploration of “De-Exinction” at a TEDx meeting at the National Geographic Society. The talks will come from a remarkable line-up of cloning experts, conservation biologists, bioethicists, artists, and others. You can watch the live stream here, and in a few weeks all the videos will be posted online.
This is a fascinatingly complex subject–there are all sorts of questions about how de-extinction would work and about whether it’s a good idea or not. I’d like to invite everyone to post any questions they have from the article or meeting in the comment thread for this post. When I get back home, I will answer as many questions as I can and publish them in a post on Monday
Originally published March 15, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.
Pretty much all the life you can see without the help of a microscope–toadstools, poplars, shortstops–is multicellular. Life began as single-celled microbes over 3.5 billion years ago. But at least 25 times over the course of the history of this planet, microbes have come together to form multicellular collectives–otherwise known as bodies.
These transitions are particularly intriguing to evolutionary biologists, because the nature of evolution itself changed along the way. If you’re a microbe, natural selection favors mutations that affect your nature as a single cell. If you stumble across a way to feed on a new nutrient, your descendants may grow faster than the competition and come to dominate your population. Single-celled microbes can evolve to be altruistic–even to commit suicide for the good of their fellow microbe–but they only do so to help their single-celled relatives.