The good folks at Corante are rejiggering the design of their blogs, The Loom included. Some stuff has yet to make the transition as of this writing, but before too long it will all be back in place.
Get to know that little skull. Scientists are going to be talking about it for centuries.
I’ve written a piece for Newsweek about how to program a cell. (The Newsweek International edition comes out this week; the US edition comes out next week.) I find the ongoing research exciting, but sometimes I wonder how much of its promise will become real. Programmable cells, for example, are an illustration of the exciting frontiers that can be explored with stem cells. It may be possible to wire the genetic circuits of a stem cell to make it grow into a particular sort of organ, produce a certain sort of hormone, etc. But it’s hard to see how any of that will come to pass if stem cell research withers on the vine. And when I look elsewhere in this week’s issue of Newsweek and see how we can’t even handle flu vaccines, my hope for medical progress in general starts to dim.
Last month I blogged about my Scientific American reviewof Dean Hamer’s new book, The God Gene. I was not impressed. It’s not that I was dismissing the possibility that there might be genetic influences on religious behavior. I just think that the time for writing pop-sci books about the discovery of a “God gene” is after scientists publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal, after the results are independently replicated, and after any hypotheses about the adaptive value of the gene (or genes) have been tested.
The New York Times, October 19, 2004
As trees across the northern United States turn gold and crimson, scientists are debating exactly what those colors are for.
The scientists do agree on one thing: the colors are for something. That represents a major shift in thinking. For decades, textbooks claimed that autumn colors were just a byproduct of dying leaves. “I had always assumed that autumn leaves were waste baskets,” said Dr. David Wilkinson, an evolutionary ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England. “That’s what I was told as a student.”
Continue reading “Those Brilliant Fall Outfits May Be Saving Trees”