Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist, is turning out to be a blogger to follow. He’s down in the Delaware Bay right now, studying some of the birds that are migrating unbelievable distances (see my story in today’s Times). Unfortunately, the birds are having a rough time because we’re taking away the food they need to power their long-haul flights: horseshoe crab eggs. Check it out.
Originally published May 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
I’m at the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting, swimming in a lot of excellent new research. I also just learned about a disease I never heard of before, with a truly awesome name: Burning Mouth Syndrome.
When I posted this on Twitter, the writerMichael Paul Mason immediately responded with his own favorite: Smoking Stool Syndrome.
So what’s your favorite?
Originally published May 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Be sure to see the great interactive feature the Times put together for my piece on ultramarathon birds.
Originally published May 25, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
On March 29, 1912, Robert Scott and two fellow explorers huddled in a tent during a fierce Antarctic blizzard. They had landed on the edge of Antarctica five months earlier, hoping to be the first people in history to reach the South Pole. They succeeded in reaching the Pole, but it was a bitter success. They discovered that another team, led by Roald Amundsen, had gotten there first. So Scott and his team turned back and began the 800-mile journey back to the sea. They hauled sledges themselves, without the help of dogs. The plunging temperatures increased the friction of the snow, so that they had to put in as much effort as they would to haul the sledges through sand. On February 4, Edgar Evans dropped dead. On March 16, Laurence Oates, barely able to walk, simply left the camp and never came back. A blizzard on March 20 left them unable to leave their tent.
The World Science Festival is running a blog in conjunction with this year’s festivities. Today I’ve written a post about one of the sessions, where scientists will talk about how we can understand our own minds by studying animal minds. Check it out here or here.
Originally published May 24, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.