Greetings–
Here’s the week that was…
STAT!
–As I mentioned a couple months ago, I’m starting to contribute to a new publication called STAT as a national correspondent. This week they officially launched, offering this description on their web site of what they’re about:
STAT is a new national publication focused on finding and telling compelling stories about health, medicine, and scientific discovery. We produce daily news, investigative articles, and narrative projects in addition to multimedia features. We tell our stories from the places that matter to our readers–research labs, hospitals, executive suites, and political campaigns.
I’m thrilled to be contributing to a publication with so many gifted journalists on board, including Sharon Begley and Helen Branswell.
My first offering at STAT is a look at Craig Venter’s new $25,000 physical exam–which includes everything from whole-genome sequencing to whole-body scanning. I talked to doctors who doubt that all this new diagnostic technology can actually bring that much benefit to healthy people–at least for the time being.
I will have more stories to share in the weeks to come. In addition, I am trying my hand at video! Well, more precisely, the gifted videographer Matt Orr is producing a monthly series of videos called Science Happens! in which I’ll be visiting labs where medical research is underway and explore how this work gets done. We’ve already shot two episodes, and the first will be coming out soon. I’ll link to it in a future Friday’s Elk.
An Andromeda Strain for Antelopes?
In June I reported about a massive, sudden die-off of saiga, a Central Asian antelope. This week I followed up with a report on a meeting where researchers shared their latest results about what happened and why. It now turns out that over half the entire species died in less than a month–perhaps 211,000 animals or more. And the leading hypothesis for what killed them is an interaction between climate change, bad weather, and the microbiome. I have more details in my Matter column for the New York Times.
The Talks
November 13, Providence, RI, at the National Association of Biology Teachers: I’ll be giving a talk in conjunction with receiving their Distinguished Service Award.
November 19, the New York City Genome Center: A panel discussion on “Jewish genomics” Details here.
January 28, the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ: Details to come.
June 23-25 International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here’s the meeting site.
New: July 31. I’ll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
The End
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Best wishes, Carl
Originally published November 6, 2015. Copyright 2015 Carl Zimmer.