Just wanted to thank readers who recently sent me requests for signed bookplates. To make sure that I was dealing with human readers, instead of Ebay robots, I asked folks to send me a picture. Here are a few.
The offer continues to stand: if you’ve gotten a book of mine and want to get it signed, I’ve printed up bookplates appropriate to each title. Email a picture with your mailing address and any special signing request.
Originally published May 28, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
The Chemical History of a Candle. By Michael Faraday. Published by Griffin, Bohn, and Co., London, 1861.
Reviewed by Deborah Blum
May 24, 2012
In 1893, the Norwegian zoologist Fridtjof Nansen set off to find the North Pole. He would not use pack dogs to cross the Arctic Ice. Instead, he locked his fate into the ice itself. He sailed his ship The Fram directly into the congealing autumn Arctic, until it became locked in the frozen sea. Nansen was convinced that the ice itself would drift up to the pole, taking him and his crew along for the ride.
For two and a half years they drifted with the pack. It gradually became clear to Nansen that The Fram had stopped moving north and was now traveling east instead, back towards Europe. He leaped out of the ship and tried to sled up to the pole, only to discover that the ice he was now traveling on was moving south. Only four degrees away from true north, he decided to retreat. He bolted back for Franz Josef Land.
World Science Festival, May 22, 2012
Our brains are not the only places where we can store memories. Each time a new pathogen invades our bodies, our immune cells have an opportunity to recognize it by some feature, usually some distinctive cleft or spike of a protein on its surface. After our bodies defeat the infection, some immune cells are tasked with keeping the memory of that feature alive for years. If that same pathogen returns for a second attack, our bodies can launch a far faster counterattack.
We can tutor our immune systems with vaccines. Depending on the disease they protect against, vaccines may contain dead viruses, protein fragments, or some other substance derived from a pathogen.
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
May 22, 2012
By Carl Zimmer
The Atavist is no stranger to this site. In fact, we’ve set up a category for the ebooks that come from this innovative ebook publisher. Yesterday, The New York Times‘s David Carr broke the news that it has gotten $1.5 million in seed money from some of the biggest names in technology, such as Eric Schmidt of Google. So this afternoon I Skyped Evan Ratliff, the chief executive of the Atavist, to talk about how they do what they do, why they end up publishing so much science, and what lies in the future for their operation. I recorded our Skype conversation on a Macbook that’s really only good these days as a walkway tile. But for some reason the video file turned out to be fairly viewable, and the audio very audible (I think an office dog chimes in late in the conversation). So I’ve uploaded it to YouTube and embedded it below. I’ve posted the audio below, too.
Continue reading “Inside the Atavist: A conversation with Evan Ratliff”