Download the Universe welcomes a vibrant discussion of science ebooks. Comments are moderated. Comments that are personally insulting, laced with profanity, or self-promotingly off-topic will be removed.
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
By Carl Zimmer
January 28, 2012
If you are curious about the world–about its galaxies, its clouds, its quarks, its crickets–then you probably own at least a few books about science. Or you have a lot. The book–by which I mean bound sheets of paper marked by moveable type–is one of the best devices for storing and retrieving information about science. It is also the kind of device we can fall in love with. On my own shelves, I have new books that are bringing me up to date on genome biology and dark matter, as well as dinged-up old books, such as a paperback edition of The Origin of Species, Stephen Jay Gould’s The Panda’s Thumb, and The Encyclopedia of Plagues and Pestilence. We dip back into old books, or reread them in full, and they thus keep us company through our time on this planet.
Continue reading “A New Kind of Review for a New Kind of Book”
The editors of Download the Universe welcome correspondence from readers, writers, and publishers. We are interested in finding out about new and upcoming ebooks about science–from Kindle Singles to Ipad apps and beyond. (Please note that we are not interested in ebooks that are just digital clones printed books.)
We are continually trying to improve our site, and so we welcome suggestions for how this site can be more useful as a source of for ebook readers.
You can contact individual editors by the links to their home pages in the right-hand column. General queries can be sent to Carl Zimmer.
While we will try to look at every submission, we won’t be able to respond to every one, nor do we guarantee posting a review of every ebook we get.
Download the Universe was born out of a conversation in January 2012. A group of writers and scientists had gathered at a meeting called Science Online to talk about the startling growth of ebooks. It was clear that ebooks were becoming an extraordinary new medium, rivalling print books in the marketplace and offering opportunities that printed books could not. We saw great things in the future of science books. There was just one thing missing: a way for readers to find out about new ebooks about science. Book reviews were showing little interest; blogs offered scant, diffuse attention. We agreed that what was needed was a science ebook review. Here it is.
Our mission is to give readers a growing guide to the world of science ebooks. We review books about science that only exist in the digital world–Download the Universe doesn’t include reviews of the automatic spin-offs of print books. But we define ebooks broadly. They may be self-published pdf manuscripts. They may be Kindle Singles about science. They can even be apps that have games embedded in them. We hope that we will eventually review new kinds of ebooks that we can’t even imagine yet. And we hope that you will find Download the Universe a useful doorway into that future.
The New York Times, January 26, 2012
Viruses regularly evolve new ways of making people sick, but scientists usually do not become aware of these new strategies until years or centuries after they have evolved. In a new study published on Thursday in the journal Science, however, a team of scientists at Michigan State University describes how viruses evolved a new way of infecting cells in little more than two weeks.
The report is being published in the midst of a controversy over a deadly bird flu virus that researchers manipulated to spread from mammal to mammal. Some critics have questioned whether such a change could have happened on its own. The new research suggests that new traits based on multiple mutations can indeed occur with frightening speed.
Continue reading “Study Finds Virus to Be Fast Learner on Infecting”