This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
Moon Rocks: An Introduction to the Geology of the Moon. By Andrew G. Tindle and Simon P. Kelley. Published by The Open University.
Guest reviewed by Veronique Greenwood
May 18, 2012
Yale Environment 360, May 17, 2012
For the past few years, Douglas McCauley has been tracking Pacific manta rays that live around a chain of remote islands called Palmyra Atoll. McCauley, a marine biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and his colleagues tag the giant fishes with “pingers” — acoustic devices that emit pulses — and then follow the sound. “You’re in a boat, following the animal night and day,” says McCauley.
The scientists embarked on this study to learn more about the ecology of these majestic animals. “There’s remarkably little known about manta rays,” McCauley says.
Continue reading “The Vital Chain: Connecting The Ecosystems of Land and Sea”
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”