Provocative New Study Warns of Crossing Planetary Boundaries

Posted on September 23, 2009May 13, 2020 by admin

Yale Environment 360, September 23, 2009

Human civilization has had a stable childhood. Over the past 10,000 years, as our ancestors invented agriculture and built cities, the Earth remained relatively stable. The average global temperature fluttered slightly, never lurching towards a greenhouse climate or chilling enough to enter a new Ice Age. The pH of the oceans remained steady, providing the right chemical conditions for coral reefs to grow and invertebrates to build shells. Those species, in turn, helped support a stable food web that provided plenty of fish for us humans to catch. The overall stability of the past 10,000 years may have played a big part in humanity’s explosion.

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Evolutionary Geniuses

Posted on September 22, 2009July 1, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Congratulations to all the Macarthur genius grant winners announced today. Their ranks include two evolutionary biologists.

1. Beth Shapiro, at Penn State, studies ancient DNA to understand extinct critters like mammoths and dodos. I’ve embedded a lecture I saw her give over the summer below. [Update: Sorry, sorry–Penn State, not Penn!]

Another winner is Richard Prum from Yale, who I had fortuitously asked to come talk to my writing class this morning. I had my students interview him for a profile. Voila, instant news hook!

The poor students. They were overwhelmed by the torrent of work Prum described, from the sophisticated optical properties of bird feathers to the origin of birds among the dinosaurs to the deep unity of biology and aesthetics. I’ve embedded the Macarthur’s video of Prum from their 2009 Fellows site, where he talks a bit about his stuff.

The Secrets Inside Your Dog’s Mind

Posted on September 21, 2009May 13, 2020 by admin

Time, September 21, 2009

Link

Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, holds out a dog biscuit.

“Henry!” he says. Henry is a big black schnauzer-poodle mix–a schnoodle, in the words of his owner, Tracy Kivell, another Duke anthropologist. Kivell holds on to Henry’s collar so that he can only gaze at the biscuit.

“You got it?” Hare asks Henry. Hare then steps back until he’s standing between a pair of inverted plastic cups on the floor. He quickly puts the hand holding the biscuit under one cup, then the other, and holds up both empty hands. Hare could run a very profitable shell game. No one in the room–neither dog nor human–can tell which cup hides the biscuit.

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Beautifying Bedbugs

Posted on September 17, 2009July 1, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

I’ve been thinking a lot about bedbugs recently, because…well, because that’s part of my job description. I was asked to be on a radio show a couple weeks ago to talk about the rising tide of bedbugs in the United States (note to self: don’t pick up old mattresses left out on trash day). But I also think they’re pretty interesting. (Traumatic insemination, for starters…) And, thanks to Alex Wild, Annie Liebowitz to the arthropods, I now also think they’re rather lovely. If you haven’t checked out his blog, do.

[Note: To all the professional exterminators who are trying to post crypto-ads for their companies in the comments, please don’t bother. I’ll delete it. Why not buy a real ad from Discover and support the site?]

Congratulations to the Age of Wonder [Book Preview]

Posted on September 16, 2009July 1, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science , by Richard Holmes, has won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. I haven’t read it, nor is its galleys sitting atop a stack of books I hope to get to. But it does look awfully good, and the Royal Society obviously agrees…Any Loom readers have a review to offer?

Update: I should really have entitled this, Congratulations, Richard Holmes. Books don’t appreciate good wishes very much.