It’s hard to believe that the World Science Festival is now in its fifth year. What started out feeling like an experiment is now a New York institution. I’m looking forward to participating yet again, and hope you’ll be able to join me.
On Friday I’ll be moderating an event called “Illuminating Resilience.” Four experts will discuss how people withstand life’s hardest shocks, and manage to bounce back.
Continue reading “World Science Festival: Resilience and Books This Weekend”
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.