Isolated Tribe Gives Clues to the Origins of Syphilis

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Science, January 18, 2008

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In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. Within months, his army collapsed and fled. It was routed not by the Italian army but by a microbe. A mysterious new disease spread through sex killed many of Charles’s soldiers and left survivors weak and disfigured. French soldiers spread the disease across much of Europe, and then it moved into Africa and Asia. Many called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian disease. Arabs called it the Christian disease. Today, it is called syphilis.

The sensational debut of syphilis inspired centuries of debate.

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Romance Is An Illusion

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Time, January 17, 2008

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 There’s nothing like being in love. Minutes seem to creep and fly at the same time. We get lost on the way home, thinking of the next date. Music cries out to us alone, and the full moon winks our way. Long after other memories fade, the recollection of love lingers. It’s pure magic. Or at least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.

For all the advances scientists are making deciphering the biology of love–for all the circuitry appearing in brain scans and the chemistry emerging in blood and scent studies–we still want to believe that science will never tame romance. We’re sure that it will always remain utterly separate from the cells and organs and reflexes that biologists study. And indeed, how could anything that so moves us to poetry and song be so reducible to behavior and chemicals?

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Twenty-first-century anatomy lesson

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Nature, January 16, 2008

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Six hundred years ago, anatomists were rock stars. Their lessons filled open-air amphitheatres, where the curious public rubbed shoulders with medical students. While a surgeon sliced open a cadaver, the anatomist, seated above on a lofty chair, deciphered the exposed mysteries of the bones, muscles and organs.

Modern anatomists have retreated from the stage to windowless medical-school labs. They have ceded their public role to geneticists unveiling secrets encrypted in our DNA. Yet anatomists may be poised for a comeback, judging from Your Inner Fish. Neil Shubin, a biologist and palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, Illinois, delves into human gristle, interpreting the scars of billions of years of evolution that we carry inside our bodies.

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Look! Over There! A Carnival!

Posted on by Lori Jia

I’m neglecting my blog at the moment, because I have to finish up a bunch of stories before I take off on a pretty long trip. Along the way, I’m giving a talk at the Rome Science Festival about mass extinctions. If, unlike me, you can read Italian, you can get the details here. I’m also supposed to write up a summary of the lecture for Il Sole 24 Ore, an Italian newspaper. I’ll post the original English when I get back for anyone who’s interested.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of good stuff out there to read. For example, check out Linnaeus’ Legacy # 3, a carnival of taxonomy-related blogs including my recent pieces on whale evolution.

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