Manta rays spend their lives in the ocean, sweeping up microscopic animals. And yet scientists have found that their well-being depends on forests. Meadows in the northwestern United States are ecologically linked to salmon thousands of miles out at sea. Today, I’ve got a piece in Yale Environment 360 in which I explore the bonds that join land and sea together. Check it out.
Originally published May 17, 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 Electric Mind. By Jessica Benko. Published by The Atavist, 2012.
Reviewed by Ed Yong
May 16, 2012
Continue reading “How a locked-in woman took control of a robot arm”
Discover, May 15, 2012
Theodore Nash sees only a few dozen patients a year in his clinic at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. That’s pretty small as medical practices go, but what his patients lack in number they make up for in the intensity of their symptoms. Some fall into comas. Some are paralyzed down one side of their body. Others can’t walk a straight line. Still others come to Nash partially blind, or with so much fluid in their brain that they need shunts implanted to relieve the pressure. Some lose the ability to speak; many fall into violent seizures.
Underneath this panoply of symptoms is the same cause, captured in the MRI scans that Nash takes of his patients’ brains.
Continue reading “Hidden Epidemic: Tapeworms Living Inside People’s Brains”
We’ve all heard about tapeworms getting into the intestines. That’s bad enough. But sometimes they can also end up in the brain. In my column in the latest issue of Discover, I write about neurocysticercosis, which is shockingly common in some parts of the world, causing an estimated five million cases of epilepsy. Yet neurocysticercosis experts consider the disease as a fairly easy one to wipe out. We have the tools to do it, but not the will. Check it out.
Originally published May 15, 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.
Blazing My Trail: Living and Thriving with Autism. By Rachel B. Cohen-Rottenburg.
Reviewed by Steve Silberman
May 14, 2012
Continue reading “When an Autism Diagnosis Comes as a Blessing”