I’m back from California and the award ceremony I mentioned last week. The trip was fun but a little absurd–I flew across the country and back within 36 hours. It’s time for some serious carbon offsetting. I got to hang out with ABC’s Robert Krulwich without having to go into a forest, and was finally able to put a face to RadioLab‘s Jad Abumrad’s incantory voice. I find I can never, ever predict what someone looks like from how they sound on the radio.Eric Kandel came to pick up a prize for his book, In Search of Memory . During a discussion with some journalism students, he and I got into a spirited debate about what science writing is for. He thought it should educate a public seriously in need of education. I said that’s what high school is for.
Discover, November 13, 2007
6. Artificial Life
In the mid-1990s, Craig Venter rose to fame by claiming that he and his colleagues would decipher the human genome long before a huge team of government scientists would. He at least managed a tie: Both groups have provided increasingly accurate versions of the genome since 2000, and Venter has just published the first genome sequence from one person (himself) that includes all the chromosomes inherited from his parents. As important as sequencing the human genome has been, however, Venter is overseeing another experiment that could someday eclipse it.
Continue reading “The 6 Most Important Experiments in the World”
Not much blogging this week–I’m heading out to California to receive the National Academies prize I wrote about a while back. In the meantime, let me direct your attention to my lead article in this week’s Science Times section of the NY Times. I wrote about swarms, herds, schools, gaggles, and other crowds of animals, focusing on one of the scientists who studies them, Iain Couzin. If you want to find out more about his quest to find the underlying rules of swarm intelligence, check out his web site.
The New York Times, November 13, 2007
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
Continue reading “From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm”
The New York Times, November 12, 2007
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult – to the ants.
Americans spend a total of 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
Continue reading “The march of the ants holds clues for humans”