The Brain Is Made of Its Own Architects

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Discover, May 17, 2011

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In the 1940s, the Nobel prize–winning neurobiologist Roger Sperry performed some of the most important brain surgeries in the history of science. His patients were newts.

Sperry started by gently prying out newts’ eyes with a jeweler’s forceps. He rotated them 180 degrees and then pressed them back into their sockets. The newts had two days to recover before Sperry started the second half of the procedure. He sliced into the roof of each newt’s mouth and made a slit in the sheath surrounding the optic nerve, which relays signals from the eyes to the brain. He drew out the nerve, cut it in two, and tucked the two ragged ends back into their sheath.

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We’d rather sell than pack!

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

The Zimmer clan is preparing for some renovations to the house, which means boxing up all my books. We’ve got a particularly tall stack of copies of my first book, At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales With Legs, and How Life Came Ashore and Went Back to the Sea. We’d rather sell these books than pack them. And so, from today till Friday, I’ll be offering autographed copies at my Amazon store for the low, low price of $5. (Imagine me shouting all this, Crazy-Eddie style.)

If you’re not familiar with the book, you can check out its carlzimmer.com page or check out thisreview in Times Higher Education, in which the reviewer writes, “It is wicked, I know, but I have the habit of turning over the corners of pages whenever I chance upon something unexpectedly interesting, exciting or informative. Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge quickly became the most dog-eared book on my shelves.”

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Turning to Biomechanics to Build a Kinder, Gentler Rib Spreader

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The New York Times, May 16, 2011

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DURHAM, N.C.—The sign on the door at the renovated tobacco warehouse reads “Physcient.” Inside are a few rooms that, depending on where you look, seem like an artist’s studio, a machine shop or a natural history museum. A lathe stands next to a drill press; along other walls are vises, huge enamel-red C-clamps, microscopes and plywood frames covered in electronics. But there are also reed-woven sculptures of insects called water boatmen hanging on the walls, along with glass-fronted boxes holding preserved flying dragon lizards. Casts of human rib bones are scattered on tables. A huge cast of a fearsome pair of fish jaws rests on a row of books.

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Should we save smallpox? A conversation with Richard Preston

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Each Friday this month, I’m having a conversation about viruses to mark the publication of my new book A Planet of Viruses. Last week, I talked to virologist Ian Lipkin about the search for new viruses and their potential to alter our behavior. Today, I’m delighted to talk with Richard Preston, the author of the Hot Zone and other books on viruses. He and I discuss the fate of smallpox. The worst viral killer in the history of civilization is now wiped off the face of the Earth, except for some laboratory stocks. Preston and I take on the question of whether we should now annihilate it. Check it out.

Originally published May 13, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

What’s so special about dinosaurs?

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Long, long ago–actually, in 2006–I wrote an article for the New York Times about a very strange relative of today’s alligators and crocodiles. Effigia, which lived 210 million years ago, did not slouch around inTriassic swamps. Instead, it stood on two big hind legs, holding its front legs–arms, really–aloft. It looked an awful lot like a bipedal dinosaur, despite the fact that the ancestors of dinosaurs and crocodiles split off 250 million years ago.

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