Paleontologists can make spectacular discoveries in remote badlands and deserts. But there are also things waiting to be found–or at least recognized–in the back rooms of museums. Things like giant filter-feeding fish.
In my new brain column for Discover, I take a look at recent research on fear. As dread turns to terror, our brains look an awful lot like the brain of a mouse as it realizes the feline end is nigh. Check it out.
Originally published February 17, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
It’s been nearly ten years since President Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn with a team of scientists to announce the completion of the first survey of the human genome. “Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life,” he said. It’s a pleasing metaphor, but it’s deeply flawed. There is not a single Human Book of Life. If there were, after all, Clinton and the scientists and all the rest of us would all be identical clones.
I was stunned to learn that National Geographic has never published a story on carnivorous plants. So I wrote one. It’s now out in March issue, as well as on the NG web site. It should come as no surprise that the article is accompanied by dazzling photos that will probably make most readers forget that there’s a story lurking in the shadows, too. You can look at the pictures in the NG slideshow, and see some extra outtakes on the web site of the photographer, Helene Schmitz.
Originally published February 16, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Last March a new kind of flu came on the scene–the 2009 H1N1 flu, a k a swine flu. Hatched from an eldritch mingling of viruses infecting humans, birds, and pigs, it swept across the world. Here in the United States, the CDC estimates that between 41 and 84 million people came down with swine flu between April and January. Of those infected, between 8,330 and 17,160 are estimated to have died. For more details on the evolution of this new flu strain, here’s a video ofa lecture I gave in November.