It only makes sense that an accomplished writer on chemistry takes a look at a hugely successful ebook on chemistry. Here’s Deborah Blum’s review of Theodore Gray’s “The Elements.”
Originally published February 21, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
I’d like to draw your attention to a new project some colleagues and I have built: a science ebook review.
For over a year now, ebooks about science have been published at a remarkable clip, but there’s been a serious gap in this growing ecosystem: a way for people who want to read new ebooks about science to find out about new projects. Because science ebooks are so new, they have a way of falling between the cracks. Conventional book reviews aren’t very interested; blogs only sporadically pay attention.
Continue reading “Introducing Download the Universe: A new science ebook review”
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
The Elements. By Theodore Gray. Published by Touch Press Publishing, 2010.
Reviewed by Deborah Blum
February 21, 2012
Time Magazine, February 20, 2012
Since 1995, John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, has been going to Uganda to study 160 chimpanzees that live in the forests of Kibale National Park. Seventeen years is a long time to spend watching wild animals, and after a while it’s rare to see truly new behavior. That’s why Mitani loves to tell the tale of a pair of older males in the Kibale group whom the researchers named Hare and Ellington.
We can see because neurons in our eyes take in visible light and relay electric signals to the brain. But some of the neurons in our retinas detect light that we cannot actually see. In fact, people who lose all their other retinal cells except these neurons are blind. If you shine a light in their eyes and ask them to guess the color, however, they guess very well. It turns out these neurons feed this invisible light to many parts of the brain. In my latest column for Discover, I take a look at this hidden light. Check it out.
[Image: Billy Rowlinson on Flickr via Creative Commons]
Originally published February 17, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.