Viruses That Make Zombies and Vaccines

Posted on January 18, 2013October 14, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

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

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.

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Black Carbon and Warming: It’s Worse than We Thought

Posted on January 17, 2013May 21, 2020 by admin

Yale Environment 360, January 17, 2013

Link

It rises from the chimneys of mansions and from simple hut stoves. It rises from forest fires and the tail pipes of diesel-fueled trucks rolling down the highway, and from brick kilns and ocean liners and gas flares. Every day, from every occupied continent, a curtain of soot rises into the sky.

What soot does once it reaches the atmosphere has long been a hard question to answer. It’s not that scientists don’t know anything about the physics and chemistry of atmospheric soot. Just the opposite: it does so many things that it’s hard to know what they add up to.

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Flatland: Rediscovering A Multidimensional Classic

Posted on January 17, 2013November 20, 2025 by Carl Zimmer

This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.

Flatland. By Edwin A. Abbott. Originally published in 1884.

Guest reviewed by Jaime Green

January 17, 2013

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The Sooty Greenhouse: My New Story For Yale Environment 360

Posted on January 17, 2013October 14, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

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.

Mutants: A Story About Tracking A Hospital Killer

Posted on January 17, 2013October 14, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

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” →