The National Association of Science Writers will be getting together in my backyard over in New Haven in November. The lineup is coming together nicely. I pitched in a little on organizing two sessions on books, which I think will be fantastic. (I’m on one of the panels, but it would still be fantastic if I were bound and gagged in the corner.)
One of the most fascinating things about the history of life is the way distantly related species can look alike. In some cases, the similarities are superficial, and in other cases they are signs of a common ancestry. And sometimes–as in the case of our brain and the brains of worms–it’s a little of both.
On my latest podcast, I talk to Forest Rohwer, a San Diego State University scientist, about those rain forests of the sea, coral reefs. Rohwer studies the criss-crossing partnerships that keep corals alive–the animals that build the reefs, the algae that harness sunlight for them, the bacteria that make compounds and recycle waste, the fish that scrape off parasitic algae, and on and on. When you consider the hundreds of microbe species that live in each reef, corals and our own bodies become surprisingly similar. Have a listen.
Originally published September 2, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
In July I cobbled together a list of the science bloggers who had decided to pull up stakes and leave scienceblogs.com because of a dispute over a blog written by Pepsi. I started the list out of sympathy for bloggers who risk losing lots of readers as they move off the Google radar, expecting that they’d move out of the big scienceblogs city to build a little sod house of their own on the WordPress prairie. But to my surprise, a lot of them have moved into other blog networks, or created new ones of their own, like cities rising from the wasteland. (Mix, my little metaphors, mix!)
Can burning scrap fight global warming, provide energy to the world’s poor without killing millions with smoke, and boost their food supply by improving the soil–all at once? The mysterious “black earth” of the Amazon, created by its inhabitants 8,000 years ago, hints that all this might be possible. I take a look at the story of biochar in “Black is the New Green,” appearing in the new issue of Conservation.
Originally published September 1, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.