Greetings from Durham!

Durham isn't quite the brutal oven that Austin was, but it's pretty sultry. I'm here for the annual International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health meeting. I gave a plenary talk about reporting on evolutionary medicine. Some stories virtually write themselves, while others, on tricky concepts like imprinting, require a lot of wrestling. With my talk over, I get to enjoy a couple days of presentations about research about everything from sex chromosomes to mountain sickness.
  Contagious Cancer On the Loose
Sometimes I like to write about rare, weird corners of biology. One of my long-time favorites corners is contagious cancer: cases in which a cancer cell breaks free of its host and invades other bodies, evolving into an immortal parasite. Until last year, scientists only had good evidence for contagious in Tasmanian devils and dogs. Here are a few pieces I've written over the years in the Times and the Loom...

Scientists Discover Origin of a Cancer in Tasmanian Devils

Raising Devils in Seclusion

How A Dog Has Lived For Eleven Thousand Years–In Other Dogs

Now it turns out that contagious cancer may not be rare at all. For the full (and freaky) story, see my column this week in the New York Times.
  The Memory Wars
I wrote a feature for Stat about a long-running debate about how memory works. It'a also a story about how scientific findings can get shot down, and what it takes for scientists to try to bring them back into favor.
  The Talks
June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings from Austin!

I'm broiling under the Texan sun on a visit to the Society for the Study of Evolution's annual meeting. Last night I gave the Stephen Jay Gould Prize lecture, about our changing picture of human evolution. I talked about the articles I've written about in recent newsletters, on exciting new fossils and insights from DNA. In the 1970s, Gould pushed his readers to appreciate human evolution as a bush, rather than a simplistic march of progress. With lots of new fossils found since then, the human evolutionary trees is even more ramified. And all the interbreeding revealed in ancient DNA over the past 100,000 years between humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other mysterious hominins has complicated our family tree even more.

It was a little spooky to talk with people after the lecture and realize that a lot of them may have been teenagers or even younger when Gould died in 2002. So if there are any whippersnappers among my Friday's Elk readers who don't really know who this Gould guy was, please go read his stuff. I'd suggest starting with a book of essays like Ever Since Darwin.

The lecture was recorded and will go on YouTube before too long. I'll link to it when it's up.

  Dirt, the Great Defender
This week I wrote about dirt. Scientists and gardeners have long known that some kinds of soil can protect plants from diseases. Its defensive powers come from the microbes that live within it. In my latest column for the New York Times, I write about scientists who are beginning to understand how the soil acts like an immune system, and their attempts to harness this power to protect crops. (Photo: National Conservation Service)
  The Talks
June 23-25: Durham, North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Homo floresiensis is one of my favorite hominins. (What's yours?) Back in 2004, scientists announced they had found a tiny human-like species on an Indonesian island. I fell into a blogging frenzy that lasted over two years:

10/26/04: Island of the Lost Hominids

11/26/04: Hobbit Limbo?

2/24/05: Return of the Prodigal Bones

3/3/05: The Hobbit's Brain

4/29/05: Hobbits Alive?

6/15/05: Return to Hobbit Limbo

10/11/05: Hobbits Again

10/14/05: Whose Brain Is It Anyway?

5/18/06: Jakob the Hobbit?

6/9/06: Small Girls With Sharp Rocks

6/21/06: Hobbits: Healthy, Happy, Human?

8/21/06: Return of the Microcephalic Hobbit

10/9/06: Homo floresiensis: Two Years Out

1/29/07: My Fossil Wish List: Homo sulawesiensis

Things quieted down after that, although the mystery remained. Now, twelve years later, scientists have found what appearS to be a second set of H. floresiensis fossils at another site on the island, dating back far further back in time. Here's my column for the New York Times on the new find and what it may tell us about these marvelous cousins.

(Photo by Tim Evanson, via Creative Commons)
  The Talks
NEXT WEEK! June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

It's late spring here in New England, and that means one thing: an invasion of snapping turtles, in search of a place to lay their eggs. Here's a story I told two years ago about learning to love my monstrous neighbors.
  Two Weeks Till the Stephen Jay Gould Prize Lecture!
If you are in Austin, or if you'll be there for the Society for the Study of Evolution meeting, please join me on June 17 for a public lecture, "The Surviving Branch: How Genomes Are Revealing The Twisted Course of Human Evolution." Details here
  Crispr's Exuberant Evolution
Crispr has become famous as a powerful new gene-editing technology. But it started out as a way for bacteria to kill viruses. It turns out that bacteria have lots of these defenses, and there may be many more technologies to draw from their evolutionary exuberance. I take a look at a couple new examples in my new column for the New York Times.
  The Talks
June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Here are a couple items for your long-holiday reading list. 
  From The Atomic Age to the Biotech Era
Last month in Stat, I wrote about science fairs and how they've become an exercise in privilege. Yesterday, my attention was drawn back to science fairs with the announcement that the Intel Science Talent Search--the biggest high school science fair in the United States--is now the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Intel was an iconic company in the age of personal computing. Likewise, Regeneron is one of the darlings of the new generation of biotech companies making (expensive) wonder drugs. The announcement inspired me to write a new piece about science fairs as bellwethers of American science over the past 70 years.
  The Genetic Great Migration
History, scientists are increasingly appreciating, is inscribed in our DNA. For my column today in the New York Times, I look at a new study on African Americans, and how their journeys in Southern slavery and then across the rest of the country has influenced their genetic variation throughout the United States.
  The Talks
June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. The title of the talk will be "The Surviving Branch: How Genomes Are Revealing The Twisted Course of Human Evolution." Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

In previous issues of Friday's Elk, I've shared a number of stories about ancient DNA and what it's telling us about our history. This week, I wrote a long profile for the New York Times about one of the most intriguing figures in this exploding discipline, a geneticist named Eske Willerslev. His story conveys not only the excitement of this field, but the powerful, complex resonance that ancient DNA has for today's world.
  The Talks
June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. The talk is entitled, "The Surviving Branch: How Genomes Are Revealing The Twisted Course of Human Evolution." Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes,

Carl

Greetings--
  Getting Astronaut Blood From Space
I've got a new video out in my Science Happens series for Stat. This time, I paid a visit to the lab of Chris Mason in New York, where he and his colleagues are studying blood and other samples from astronaut Scott Kelly. They're examining his DNA to see if life in space brings about any changes in how his genes work. Check it out. (GIF from NASA)

  The Mystery of the Dwindling Red Knot
Climate change is altering the natural world in ways we're just beginning to reckon with. A new study shows that it may be wreaking havoc with one of the greatest migrations in the animal kingdom. For my column this week in the New York Times, I take a look at the mystery of a shrinking shorebird.

  Three Years!
This week marks the three-year anniversary of "Matter," my weekly column for the Times. In May 2013, I kicked things off with a column about the 13-year cycle of cicadas. And here's a video of a talk I had at the time about the column with my editor, Michael Mason. I'm incredibly grateful to Mike and the editorial team at the Science Times for giving me such a fantastic sandbox to play in, and look forward to many more surprising stories.

  The Talks
June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

I'm back, with some further reading for your enjoyment and edification (I hope!).
  Fighting Zika with the Most Amazing Microbe
Have you ever heard of Wolbachia? If not, you have a wonderful surprise in store. It's arguably the most successful symbiont on Earth, a species of bacteria that lives inside several million species of invertebrates. And it thrives in those hosts with weird manipulations of their reproduction. I've written about Wolbachia a few times in the past (here for example), and this week in the New York Times I revisit it to explore an exciting possibility: that Wolbachia could block mosquito-borne diseases including Zika and dengue fever. Check it out.
  Re-engineering Humanity
A few weeks ago, I mentioned I was going to talk with historian Daniel Kevles about the past and future of human engineering. Emily McManus, the editor of ted.com, came to the event, and has written up this excellent piece about it.
  Science & Storytelling
On April 25, I participated in a day-long meeting about how to tell the stories of science, hosted by National Geographic and Yale. The videos are now up on this page. I talk in this session (it's the third video on the meeting page). David Quammen's keynote on writing about Yellowstone is here.

  The Talks
June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

It's a short email today. Also, a head's up that I won't be sending out a Friday's Elk next week. I'll be back in touch in May. Happy Spring!
  California's Mysterious Foxes
About nine thousand years ago, gray foxes arrived on California's Channel Islands. They've since evolved into a new species--a tiny animal that's smaller than a house cat. In my column this week in The New York Times, I write about a new study that peers into their genomes--and finds next to no genetic variation. How they've survived with that kind of DNA is a mystery.

  The Talks
TOMORROW--> April 23: Yale. Science & Storytelling Conference. Details here

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--
  Science Fairs and Privilege
This week at Stat I wrote about my experience as the father of a girl in a science fair. She had a great time, but I came away reminded of how problematic the science fair phenomenon has become. The piece triggered a lot of discussion on Twitter and Facebook, which Stat followed up with some thoughtful opinion pieces from science fair participants, sharing their own experiences. Also, physicist Chad Orzel chimed in about how parents can help kids think scientifically at home.
  The Tree of Life, Now With A Lot More Branches
This week I wrote in the New York Times about a new study that reveals just how much of the tree of life is made up of bacteria. We animals are a mere twig. (I added the labels above to an original figure from the paper.)
  File Under: Dubious Honor
Not sure how to feel about being referred to as a "Kardashian of science." But there's that.
  Next week: the Bronx and New Haven
Just a reminder that I'll be at Fordham and Yale next week giving talks. If you live in the area, join us!
  Ragtime Science
While working on my next book on heredity, I stumbled across something strange and surprising. I was making my way through a scanned version of Thomas Hunt Morgan's classic 1915 book, The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, when I came across the typed lyrics to a song that some library patron long ago slipped into the preface.



On Twitter, Dwayne Godwin kindly pointed me to a partial explanation. But I would love to know more about it...

  The Talks
April 21: New York. Fordham University. "Editing Life: The Strange Science of Engineering Humans, Altering Nature, and Bringing Species Back from Extinction" Details here.

April 23: Yale. Science & Storytelling Conference. Details here

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah. The talk is entitled, "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"

NEW!--> September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

A Times double-header this week!
  "Just" A Theory
This week, the New York Times ran a series of articles about misconceptions. I rounded out the series with a piece on one of the biggest misconceptions about science: What's a theory? Hint: it doesn't involve someone's ideas about how cats fit in boxes.
  Not the Mailman
For my "Matter" column this week, I write about the science of cuckoldry--how researchers are using DNA to figure out just how often dad isn't dad. (Photo illustration by Stephen Webster.)
  Talking Viruses on Inquiring Minds
I talked with Kishore Hari about viruses for the podcast "Inquiring Minds." Listen here.


  The Talks
April 21: New York. Fordham University. "Editing Life: The Strange Science of Engineering Humans, Altering Nature, and Bringing Species Back from Extinction" Details here.

April 23: Yale. Science & Storytelling Conference. Details here

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Guaranteed: Nothing on this list is an April Fool's joke.
  Save the Tapeworms!
Endangered animals get a lot of medical attention in captivity--but are they getting too much attention for their own good? For my column this week in the New York Times, I write about some scientists who think that parasites are important to the long-term survival of species.
  DNA in 3D
In some ways, DNA is a ridiculous molecule to use for heredity. The DNA in a single cell measures six feet in length, and has to be carefully folded in order to function. For my latest Science Happens video on Stat, I visit a scientist who studies DNA's three-dimensional structure. It's accompanied by gorgeous computer visualizations of our inner tangle. (GIF courtesy of Leonid Mirny, MIT)
  Science & Storytelling
I've added a new entry to the talks below. On April 23, I'll be at the Science & Storytelling Conference at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. It's shaping up as an exciting event, including a keynote from the great nature writer David Quammen.

  The Talks
April 21: New York. Fordham University. Details here.

NEW!--> April 23: Yale. Science & Storytelling Conference. Details

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

No stomach flu, no head cold. Just a case of playing hooky on a pleasant Friday. Without further ado, here's Friday's Late Elk:
  Cavefish That Walk Up Waterfalls
I've been rather obsessed with how life came on land for my whole career. In my first book, At the Water's Edge, I delved into the remarkable history of research into this question. I've tried to keep up with new studies on this great transition in the years since the book came out.

In the book, I wrote about the apparent oddity of vertebrates walking on land. There are many fish in the sea, and yet only once does it seem that they successfully moved ashore with an anatomy for walking. Mudskippers crutch along the edge of the sea, and frogfish bounce slowly along the ocean floor. But it didn't seem as if anything quite evolved walking on land like our ancestors did.

Now, in one of those weird surprises that biology delivers with wonderful regularity, scientists have found a fish that really walks. It has even evolved a skeleton much like ours in the process. Making it an even more wonderful story is the fact that this fish lives only in a cave in Thailand, where it walks up waterfalls. Check it out.

(GIF from Flammang et al., Scientific Reports. Open Access)
  Virus Marathon
As promised last week, here's the podcast of my conversation with Vincent Racaniello and his team at This Week in Virology.
  Engineering Humans


Here's a photo from the Strand Bookstore in New York, where I spoke with historian Daniel Kevles in front of a great crowd about CRISPR and human engineering. I'm told the conversation will be going online. I'll send a link when one becomes available.

(Photo via Idea Distillery)
  The Talks

NEW!--> April 21: New York. Fordham University. Details here.

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

It's a quieter week this time around, but here are a few things for your enjoyment...
  More Than Just A One-Night Stand
The study of ancient human DNA just keeps getting more interesting. In the New York Times, I write this week about a new survey of the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA lurking in our genomes. It looks like there was even more interbreeding between our ancestors and these extinct humans than we previously thought. Here's the story. P.S.: As a big fan of the comedian Harry Shearer, I was tickled to see on Twitter that the column inspired him to write a Neanderthal love song.

(Photo above by Erich Ferdinand via Creative Commons)
  Undark Magazine
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm an advisor to a new magazine about science called Undark. The editor-in-chief, Deborah Blum, has written an essay to explain why she's launching it. Check it out.
  New York This Thursday to Talk About Engineering Humans
If you're in New York, please consider coming to the Strand Bookstore on Thursday to hear me talk to the eminent historian of science Daniel Kevles about CRISPR's place in the history of our manipulations of nature--and of ourselves. Details are here.
  This Week in Virology
On Wednesday I visited the office/studio of Columbia virologist Vincent Racaniello to record an episode of his podcast, This Week in Virology. We spoke for over two hours with Racaniello's regular podcast crew on a huge range of subjects, from Ebola to Moby Dick. The recording will be posted Sunday--check in at the podcast web site for the episode.

That weird wall in the photo is made up of plastic containers from a polio experiment. I'm assuming it's not contagious...




  The Talks
March 24: Strand Bookstore, New York: Should We Re-engineer Humanity? With Daniel Kevles. Details here.

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

An exciting week! A Big Honor
Stephen Jay Gould, the late Harvard paleontologist, was a master of bringing evolution to a wide audience in books like Wonderful Life and The Panda's Thumb. The Society for the Study of Evolution now honors his legacy with the Stephen Jay Gould Prize. I'm delighted to be this year's winner. I'll be giving a public lecture in conjunction with the award ceremony. If you're in Austin on June 17, please come by. Details here.
  Chewing over Human Evolution
How did we evolve our big-brained anatomy from ape-like ancestors? A shift in our diet gave us the extra energy we needed. A new study suggests that we didn't have to wait till the invention of fire for a better cuisine. Slicing and pounding our food might have given us a good start on the path to humanity. I write about the study in my column this week in the New York Times.
  Science Communication in Cell
The journal Cell invited me to write an essay about how scientists can better communicate with the public. You can read it on the journal's web site. (I've also uploaded a pdf here.) 
  Virus Podcast
I was a recent guest on Podcast Science to talk about A Planet of Viruses. It's a French show, but my hosts thankfully let me talk in English. Otherwise we would have been limited to questions about what to order for lunch. You can listen to it here.

  The Talks
March 15: Cooper Union, New York. A conversation with biologist Sean Carroll

March 24: Strand Bookstore, New York: Should We Re-engineer Humanity? With Daniel Kevles. Details here.

New-->June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here's the meeting site.

New-->June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, "Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA." Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

This week brings a virus double-header about strange ways to fight those pesky buggers...
  A Virus With Its Own Immune System?
Over at Stat, I wrote about giant viruses, the weirdest viruses of all. For one thing, these viruses are so big, they get infected by their own viruses. This week giant viruses got even weirder, when scientists reported that they may have an immune system of their own to fight their viral enemies. (Image courtesy of American Scientist)
  Our Inner Viruses Switch On Our Antiviral Genes
We get sick with viruses too, of course, and our cells fight them by switching on lots of defensive genes. It turns out that many of the switches for those genes came from viruses. I tell that twisted tale in my column this week for the New York Times.
  Another New Talk--Should We Re-Engineer Humanity?
I'm thrilled to join the historian of science Daniel Kevles (author of In the Name of Eugenics) to talk about past and future dreams of human genetic engineering. We'll be at the fantastic Strand Bookstore in New York on March 24. Details here.
  The Talks
March 15: Cooper Union, New York. A conversation with biologist Sean Carroll

NEW--> March 24: Strand Bookstore, New York: Should We Re-engineer Humanity? With Daniel Kevles. Details here.

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

These days, I'm working on a book about heredity. This week I spent some time digging through the archives a historical society and came across this crazy pedigree from the early 1900s. At the time, the rediscovery of Mendel had set everyone abuzz, and a lot of scientists believed that everything was genetic--even boat building. (Note how some relatives were merely artistic, musical, mechanical, or literary. Heterozygotes, I guess...)


  A Controversy over Trace DNA
Scientists can detect smaller and smaller amounts of DNA. While this advance has enabled scientists to study genes in greater detail, it also raises the risks of false positives. And when that false positive points to a criminal suspect, the stakes can be huge. I take a look at the controversy over trace DNA for my New York Times column this week. [Photo by Petra Fritz]
  The Media Startup to Envy
Here's a portrait of Stat as a young publication. (Sorry, James Joyce.) Thanks to Columbia Journalism Review for the attention.
  A Personal History of Science Blogging
Hippo Reads has published an excerpt from my chapter in Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. I offer up a personal history of science blogging over the last 15 years.
  The Serengeti Rules
I wanted to elaborate about the new entry in my talks below. On March 15, I'll be at Cooper Union in New York to have a conversation with evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll. Carroll has done important studies on how new forms of animals evolve, and these days he is also vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Somehow, he finds time to write books, too, and really good ones at that--so good that he won this year's Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science. Carroll and I will be talking about his latest book, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters. We'll be talking about everything from cancer to wildebeest. The talk is free--details are here.
  The Talks
March 15: Cooper Union, New York. A conversation with biologist Sean Carroll

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

A great week for gene flow...
  Humans and Neanderthals Get More Intimate
Over the past few years, I've written several pieces for The New York Times about how our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals and other extinct human populations (in 2010, 2013, 2015, and again in 2015). Now comes a cool study that appears to uncover even more gene flow--not going from extinct humans into our own gene pool, but in the other direction. I don't know how many more of these big insights we will get in years to come. But it's clear that our understanding about human evolution is becoming profoundly different from what you would have read in the textbooks twenty years ago.

If you need a broader review of what we understand about human evolution--not just interbreeding in the past 100,000 years, but the past few million years of evolutionary change--the American Journal of Physical Anthropology just published a nice piece that's freely accessible. Here's a chart from the reviewing showing almost all the known variety of human relatives.

  "Parasite Whisperer"--Like That's a Bad Thing?
As I mentioned last week, I wrote a column about a study suggesting that a parasite can make chimpanzees lose their fear of leopards. On Tuesday, my Phenomena colleague Ed Yong offered his own take. Like some of the scientists I talked to, he's skeptical. Ed mentioned my column, saying that "parasite whisperer Carl Zimmer was the first to write about the study." A member of Twitter nation wondered if that description of me was meant as an insult, and Ed explained that it wasn't. But it is true that others have had similar suspicions such as in this interview I had with Ira Glass on This American Life. "Mr. Zimmer, whose side are you on?"
  Vive La Planete de Virus!
The second edition of my book A Planet of Viruses has come out in a French translation. Here's the lovely cover. I'll be talking about the book on Podcastscience, a French podcast, on March 1. You can listen live. (My French is so primitif that I'll stick to English and let others translate.)

You can order the French translation here. (English version here.)


  As If You Didn't Have Enough Science Email Newsletters...
It's remarkable that email newsletters--based on one the oldest forms of online communication out there--are the new hot thing. Be that as it may, they're very much a part of my own reading day, as they presumably are of yours. If you are looking for other science-related ones to subscribe to, here are a few of my favorites: Rose Eveleth, Alexis Madrigal, Ed Yong, and (coming soon) the Science Times section of the New York Times.
  The Talks
June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

My first cold of the season slowed down this week's newsletter. Between the sniffles, here we go:
  Viruses and Birth Defects
As Zika virus spreads through the Western Hemisphere, scientists are investigating whether it's responsible for a burst of birth defects in Brazil, known as microcephaly. In this week's Science Times section of the New York Times, I wrote about other viruses, like rubella and cytomegalovirus, that can also harm a fetus if they infect a pregnant woman. Those lesser-known are providing a guide for research on Zika--but we still don't understand a lot of their biology.
  I Love the Smell of Leopards in the Morning
I've written a lot about parasites over the years, ever since I wrote a book about them. But of all those parasites, the one I've written the most about is Toxoplasma. (Here are a few articles from 2006, 2011 2012, 2013, and 2014.) The science keeps moving forward, and so there's more to write. To understand how Toxoplasma alters our minds, scientists want to understand its evolutionary history. To that end, scientists recently ran a study on Toxoplasma-exposed chimpanzees. It's possible that the parasite makes them less fearful of leopards--which can serve as Toxoplasma's final host. I wrote about the research this week in my Matter column for the Times. Check it out.
  Dinosaur Plumage
I met the photographer Robert Clark a few years ago when we worked together in China on a story for National Geographic about the origin of feathers. Clark went on to take a staggering number of photographs of gorgeous feathers all over the world. Now he's put them together in a book, for which I've written a preface. It comes out in April. You can pre-order it now.


  The Talks
June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

New!--> January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Happy February! I hope that you, unlike me, aren't greeting the new month with a rather unpleasant, unexpected snowstorm. If you need a little distraction between the roof-raking and snow-shoveling, here are a couple items:
  An Ancient Genome And A Skipped Bit of Software
Last October, I wrote a column for the New York Times about the first ancient human genome recovered from Africa. Last week, however, I discovered that the scientists had made a small oversight in their analysis that led to a big problem in their conclusions.

I asked my editor what to do. Should we add a correction to my column? An update note?

Instead, my editor made the right call: just write a new column.

So I did. It was fun to follow up on the evolution of science, rather than just providing a snapshot of a single new paper.


  The Lifespan Machine
For my new Science Happens video for Stat, I paid a visit to a lab where scientists observe thousands of little worms grow old and note the moment each of them die. No one has ever carried out such a precise observation of so many lifespans at once, and the experience has led these researchers to a pretty cosmic perspective on why we live as long as we do.

Added bonuses: cameos by Woody Allen and Monty Python. Watch it here.
  The Talks
This week!-->February 11: "Is There A Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?" MIT Communication Forum Details here.

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Don't check your calendar. It is, indeed, Saturday, not Friday. As I was getting ready to put together this newsletter yesterday, I got a call from an editor who needed a story done fast. Everything had to go by the wayside, including Friday's Elk.
  A Court Case Over Ancient Skeletons
As I've written about human prehistory in recent years, I've become aware of a pair of 9,500-year-old skeletons stuck in a legal limbo. For my New York Times column this week, I report on a Supreme Court decision that now transfers the bones to a California Indian tribe.
  The Talks
February 11: "Is There A Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?" MIT Communication Forum Details here.

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

In advance of the blizzard coming to my part of the world (and maybe yours), here are a couple stories, a video, and even a podcast for your wintry enjoyment:
  Obama's Three Big Science Plays
The cancer "moonshot" that Obama announced at his State of the Union address last week was the last of three high-profile projects in biomedicine he's personally unveiled over the past three years. At Stat, I get some prominent scientists to gaze into their crystal ball and figure out what kind of legacy Obama is leaving behind with these trio of initiatives. One important lesson: actual moonshots are really expensive.
  Sifting the Jewels from the Junk
Last year in the New York Times Magazine I wrote about the debate over how much of the genome is functional, and how much is junk. This week in the New York Times, I look at a new study that offers an intriguing way to distinguish between the two. By plunging into evolutionary history, scientists can discover hidden genes that actually make essential molecules.
  It's Alive!
I've got a new video this week for my series at Stat, Science Happens. I pay a visit to a lab where scientists grow brains. There I discover the process is unsettlingly akin to making a loaf of bread.
  Where's the Ketchup?
Over the weekend, the producers of Reply All, the excellent podcast about Internet culture, gave me a call to talk about the role of diversity in science. I talked about how bringing people together lets them see old problems in a new light--like bringing together an ecologist and a gastroenterologist to understand why someone gets sick. I chime in about two-thirds of the way through this week's episode.
  The Talks
COMING UP!--> January 28: New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. I'll talk about how parasites can control their hosts' minds. Details here.

February 11: "Is There A Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?" MIT Communication Forum Details here.

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Here are a couple pieces for your weekend reading...
  Stopping the Salamanders to Save Them
Over the summer, I wrote in the New York Times about an impending ecological disaster. The United States is home to 190 species of salamanders, the greatest diversity of these amphibians in any country. Scientists worry that a newly discovered salamander-killing fungus in Europe could drive American salamanders extinct if it shows up in the U.S.

This week, I have an update: the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service put a new rule in place, banning the import of 201 species of salamanders as pets (as well as moving them across state lines). We'll see if that blocks the plague, or at least gives scientists time to prepare for it.
  Genetic Messages in a Bottle
On Thursday in the Times, I write about cell-free DNA, loose genetic material that floats around our body. Scientists look at it as a message in a bottle, telling us things about our inner health. And now researchers have found a way to figure out where that bottle comes from. That discovery could lead to new tests that could reveal clues about strokes, heart attacks, and other disorders.
  The Talks
January 28: New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. I'll talk about how parasites can control their hosts' minds. Details to come.

NEW-- February 11: "Is There A Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?" MIT Communication Forum Details here.

June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31: I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Happy New Year! I'd like to welcome all the new subscribers who joined us here during the holiday hiatus. I hope you'll enjoy Friday's Elk in 2016 and beyond. Each week I send out a relatively brief email to bring subscribers up to date with the stuff I've been publishing, along with talks I'm giving and any other relevant news.

If you're curious about what sort of stuff you can expect here, you might want to check out the things I was up to in 2015. For example, here's a story I wrote for the New York Times about how becoming a mother means becoming a chimera. And here's an episode of Radiolab where I talked to Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich about editing genes. You can find an archive of my stories and information about my books on my web site. I also set up a Pinterest board with links to my talks that are available online.

Okay--now here's what I've been up to since the last Friday's Elk...
  Exploring the Iceman's Stomach
A man died in the Alps 5,300 years ago, and his body was dug out of the ice in 1991. For the past quarter-century scientists have been probing his body to learn about what life was like in ancient Europe. In Stat this week, I write about how scientists have now discovered bacteria in his stomach that cause ulcers and gastric cancer in living people. The study offers some clues to the early roots of modern health.
  The Clock in Our Brains
Our brains switch genes on and off in a daily 24-hour cycle. The brain's inner clock may be important to our long-term mental health. On December 28, I wrote a column for The New York Times about scientists who look at donated brains to catch our clocks in action. They can even see how those clocks change over our lifetime.
  How We Got Big
Our ancestors 800 million years ago evolved from single-celled organisms into the first animals. Now we have trillions of cells in our bodies, which develop into hundreds of cell types and tissues. A team of scientists have taken an exquisitely close look at that transition, by looking at how a single molecule evolved into a tool for dividing animal cells and turning them into animal bodies. I tell the story this week in The New York Times.
  Science News That Stuck With Us in 2015
The New York Times asked its science writers to look back at 2015 and reflect on the big stories of the year. I wrote about a cluster of columns in which I explored how ancient DNA is revealing new insights into early humans history.
  What to Expect in 2016
Stat, meanwhile, asked its writers to look ahead to medical news in 2016. I tried to separate some of the hype about gene editing and epigenetics from the real promise for the year to come.
  A Science Blogging Guide
  I contributed a chapter to the upcoming book Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. You can order it now; it comes out on March 1.
  A World Without Parasites
I talked to the folks at Tumble, a podcast about science for kids and their parents, about what the world would be like without parasites. Hint: less icky, yes, but not so good either. If that talk whets your appetite, I wrote a whole book about the hidden importance (and coolness) of parasites.
  Contemplating Human Germline Modification
In October I gave a talk at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetic Counselors about how gene editing technology could pose new ethical quandaries. The video is now on Youtube. The Talks
January 28, 2016: the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. I'll talk about how parasites can control their hosts' minds. Details to come.

June 23-25 International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

July 31. I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
  The End
  As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Like many of you, I'm in a final scramble to finish off a ridiculous to-do list before the holidays hit me like a falling grand piano. So this will probably be the last issue of Friday's Elk I'll send out for 2015. I'll be up and running again on January 8, 2016. So here's a quick look at the old and the new.

The Evolution of a Good Night's Rest

As primates go, we sleep very little and spend a lot of that time dreaming. This week in the New York Times, I write about a new study that seeks to explain how we ended up this way, and how sleep may have played a big role in human evolution.

Viruses to Cure Your Ills

Here's another video I made with Business Insider. It's about phage therapy, the long-dreamed-of strategy to use viruses to kill disease-causing bacteria.

Longform Picks for 2015

The fabulous curation site Longform asked me to pitch in to select some of 2015's best science writing. Here's what my colleagues and I picked.

A Science Writing Workshop

Each January I teach a two-part workshop about science writing at Yale. I originally designed it for Yale science graduate students, but we've loosened up over the years, so if you're in the area and interested, you can get in touch with the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Yale to inquire about registering. Here is the workshop plan and the assigned reading.

The Talks

January 28, 2016: 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.

July 31. I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

The End

As always, if you have friends who would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

I was traveling for much of this week on a reporting trip, part of which I spent suited up in the outfit you can see above. So I don't have a Matter column this week. Instead, let me direct your attention to the second installment of my "Science Happens" video series for STAT. I pay a visit to a lab where scientists are trying to engineer bacteria to heal our microbiomes.

As always, if you have friends you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please tell them to sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Sorry to be sending out this week's issue of Friday's Elk on a Saturday. I blame writing. I'm starting on the first draft of my next book, and I was having so much fun spending a day of uninterrupted writing that I forgot about everything else.

Better late than never, here are a couple new items for you to read.

Lamarck or Not?

--Can the experiences of parents alter the course of heredity? This week in the New York Times, I look at some recent studies suggesting that they can. They raise the possibility that obesity can alter the function of genes in a father's sperm, leading in turn to changes in his children's metabolism. While this work is provocative and potentially very important, the case is far from closed.

The Power of Simplicity

I've written a new feature for STAT (my third so far). I profile Slava Epstein, a scientist who fled Russia and discovered a marvelously simple way to discover new antibiotics: make bacteria happy. (Photo of Epstein by Josh Reynolds for STAT)

The Talks

January 28, 2016: 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.

July 31. I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

The End

--As always, if you have friends you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please tell them to sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Happy Thanksgiving! In honor of the turkey fest, here's a breifer-than-usual Friday's Elk this week.

Europe Evolving

--This week in the New York Times, I reported about a study of 230 genomes retrieved from European skeletons ranging from 8,500 to 2,300 years in age. They create a chronicle of human evolution, documenting how the agricultural revolution altered the genetic landscape of a continent. Check it out.

The Talks

January 28, 2016: 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.

July 31. I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

The End

--As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Here's the week that was...

Denisovans and Other Mysterious Humans

--Ancient DNA continues to illuminate our family tree. In 2010, I wrote about mysterious ancient relatives of Neanderthals called Denisovans, which scientists only knew from a tooth, a fingerbone, and the 50,000-year-old DNA they contained. Now scientists have found some new Denisovan DNA in a tooth, and the broadening picture we're getting is fascinating. Yet in some ways, the enigma of the Denisovans is only getting deeper. I wrote about the mystery in The New York Times this week.

How to Blog

--If you are thinking about blogging about science--or would like to become a better science blogger--you'll want to get this new book: Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. It's edited by by three wonderful bloggers--Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, and Jason Goldman--and has chapters by a variety of writers (including me). You can pre-order it here.

The Talks

New: My "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit this week was as fun as I anticipated. Here's the transcript.

January 28, 2016: 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.

July 31.Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

The End

--As always, if you have friends who you think think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

On this Friday the 13th, I wish you only good luck and offer you the following diversions...

The DNA of a Million Veterans

--I've got a new story at STAT, about the next chapter in the history of genetics. Researchers are launching massive studies of huge numbers of people in order to link genes to diseases. One of the biggest is being run by the U.S. military. The Veterans Administration is gathering the DNA of a million veterans to study everthing from diabetes to PTSD. I went inside the Million Veteran Program to get a first-hand look at this new way of exploring our genes. (Be sure to check out the video of the enormous operation!)

Introducing "Science Happens"

At STAT, I'm also going to be presenting a monthly video series called "Science Happens." I'll be visiting labs where some of the most intriguing medical research is taking place. The first video is now ready for your delectation. I visit John Krakaeur, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University, who is developing a new way to treat people with strokes: using video games in which people pretend to be dolphins. Along the way I discover that if I were a dolphin, I'd probably end up as a shark's breakfast pretty quickly.

I'm putting together a list of other labs to visit for the series, so if you know of any that are especially cool, let me know!

The Lilliput Effect

Mass extinctions don't just wipe out lots of species. They also push evolution off in new directions. For my latest column for the New York Times, I write about new research revealing that vertebrates got small after a mass extinction. It's a phenomenon scientists call the Lilliput Effect, and it offers a sobering hint at what life will be like on Earth as we drive big animals to extinction.

The Talks

New! In August I spoke at the New York Academy of Sciences about telling stories about science. They've posted the video here.

Also New! November 18, noon ET: I'll be on Reddit's "Ask Me Anything" page to talk about science writing, STAT, and recent developments in genetics and medicine. Join us and ask me anything. (Here's a previous AMA I did a couple years ago to give you a sense of how they work.)

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.

July 31. I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

The End

--As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

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

--As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

On Saturday, I gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the National Society of Genetic Counselors. I described the fast rise of CRISPR and encouraged the audience to consider the ethical questions that may arise if we gain the ability to fix diseases or even enhance traits in embryos. Laura Hercher, a genetic counselor at Sarah Lawrence College, also gave a talk in the session. She focused on mitochondrial replacement therapy, which is sometimes wrongly described as producing "three-parent babies."

During our talks, Laura and I would stop from time to time to poll the audience about a series of ethical questions about gene editing. The picture above, taken by Carrie Blout, shows one result based on a scenario in which scientists identify a gene variant that improves cognition.

It's not often a reporter gathers this sort of data, so I thought I'd share the results. I've uploaded the full results here. It's interesting that genetic counselors were pretty comfortable with germline engineering to fix serious diseases, but not to protect people from diseases or enhance their traits.

A Flood of Ancient DNA

--There was a time when new reports on ancient DNA arrived at a manageable pace--once every couple months or so. Now the science is moving so fast that I sometimes end up writing about ancient DNA week after week.

This week is a case in point--just after writing about 5,000-year-old plague in European and Asian skeletons, I wrote about another study for the New York Times this past Monday. For the new story I move over to the New World. DNA from a pair of 11,500-year-old skeletons from Alaska offer some tantalizing clues about humans traveled from one hemisphere to the other. (See my earlier story on Kennewick Man for more on what ancient DNA can tell us about the peopling of the Americas.)

A Planet of Microbiomes

--In addition to my weekly "Matter" column, I also filed a story for the Thursday Times about the microbiome--or, to be more accurate, the world's many microbiomes. We have communities of microbes inside our bodies, as do trees and oceans and tundras and undersea volcanoes. Each microbiome contains a different combination of species, most of which we don't understand at all. The leading experts on microbiomes have come forward with a call for a national--perhaps even international--initiative to find the rules that bind all microbiomes together.

The Science Writing Resurgence

--Next spring, a new science magazine called Undark will be launching (I'm on the board of advisors.) Here's an article in Columbia Journalism Review about what's in store, and how Undark fits into the pleasing bloom of new science publications.

Speaking of new science publications, the folks at Stat have been working hard for months now getting ready to launch. They'll be rolling Stat out very soon, so stay tuned. (As a national correspondent for Stat, I've been working on stuff you'll be seeing soon, too.) In the meantime, you can check out their web site, where you can sign up for their richly informative daily newsletter.

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.

New: June 23-25 International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.

The End

--As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

There are few things more interesting than ancient human DNA and diseases (if you ask me). So the opportunity to write about both of them in one article was the highlight of my week.

Scientists who have been gathering DNA from Bronze Age skeletons wondered if they might have unknowingly scooped up some DNA from interesting pathogens. Turns out, they did. From 5,000-year-old skeletons, they extracted the DNA of Yersinia pestis, the cause of the plague. The discovery pushes back the plague 3,000 years, and allows us to see the stepwise evolution of the pathogen into its full-blown, flea-carried form.

I have the whole story in my column this week for the New York Times.

(The creepy picture above is the outfit worn by doctors in the seventeenth century to protect themselves from the plague. Via Wikipedia.)

--Here's my current list of upcoming talks. I'll be adding new ones soon:

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.

As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

A couple weeks ago I stopped by the offices of Business Insider in New York to chat with the editors there, both on camera and off, about all sorts of things biological. They've transformed our conversations into a series of short articles and videos that they've been sprinkling onto the Internet for the past few days like pinches of chili powder.

Here's what they've released so far...

--An article about giant viruses thawing out of the Siberian permafrost after being buried alive for tens of thousands of years.

--And another one on the antibiotic resistance crisis, and how bacteria-killing viruses might help us overcome it.

--Here's a video in which I offer my 90-second dinner-table explanation of CRISPR, the remarkable new gene-editing tool. (Also, in case you missed it, Business Insider put out a short video last week in which I talk about the risk we run of contaminating Mars with Earth life.)

--Oink!

Speaking of CRISPR, last week I was watching a live video feed from a scientific meeting on the subject when one of the scientists said something that made me do a double-take (and tweet in disbelief).

George Church of Harvard said he and his colleagues had altered 62 genes in one go in pig cells. That blows past the previous record-holder of six genes. After Science rushed the paper into print on Sunday, I read it, talked to Church, and checked in with other experts. As I write this week in the New York Times, the experiment is definitely a tour de force, but it may not fulfill your wildest Frankenstein-fueled dreams.

--Science Ink Is Everywhere

In 2011, I published a book called Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. Since then, scientists and science-o-philes regularly pull up their sleeves and pant legs (and more!) to show me their ink. On Sunday evening, while I was at a party at the annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers, I took a couple pictures:

Two people showing off the same tattoo--"brain" in Egyptian hieroglyphics.



Here's Goya's Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.



--And finally, a list of upcoming talks (no new additions this week)

October 21, Farmington, Connecticut, at the Jackson Laboratory: "From Viruses to Whales, From Newspapers to Twitter: A Career in Science Writing." Details here.

October 24, Pittsburgh: A discussion about the future of DNA editing at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetics Counselors.

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.

--That's it.

As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

My apologies--for some reason some of the links in today's newsletter didn't work. I've fixed them in this version. I promise not to send bad links on future Friday!

Greetings--

A couple weeks ago I stopped by the offices of Business Insider in New York to chat with the editors there, both on camera and off, about all sorts of things biological. They've transformed our conversations into a series of short articles and videos that they've been sprinkling onto the Internet for the past few days like pinches of chili powder.

Here's what they've released so far...

--An article about giant viruses thawing out of the Siberian permafrost after being buried alive for tens of thousands of years.

--And another one on the antibiotic resistance crisis, and how bacteria-killing viruses might help us overcome it.

--Here's a video in which I offer my 90-second dinner-table explanation of CRISPR, the remarkable new gene-editing tool. (Also, in case you missed it, Business Insider put out a short video last week in which I talk about the risk we run of contaminating Mars with Earth life.)

--Oink!

Speaking of CRISPR, last week I was watching a live video feed from a scientific meeting on the subject when one of the scientists said something that made me do a double-take (and tweet in disbelief).

George Church of Harvard said he and his colleagues had altered 62 genes in one go in pig cells. That blows past the previous record-holder of six genes. After Science rushed the paper into print on Sunday, I read it, talked to Church, and checked in with other experts. As I write this week in the New York Times, the experiment is definitely a tour de force, but it may not fulfill your wildest Frankenstein-fueled dreams.

--Science Ink Is Everywhere

In 2011, I published a book called Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. Since then, scientists and science-o-philes regularly pull up their sleeves and pant legs (and more!) to show me their ink. On Sunday evening, while I was at a party at the annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers, I took a couple pictures:

Here are a couple pictures:

Two people showing off the same tattoo--"brain" in Egyptian hieroglyphics.



Here's Goya's Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.



--And finally, a list of upcoming talks (no new additions this week)

October 21, Farmington, Connecticut, at the Jackson Laboratory: "From Viruses to Whales, From Newspapers to Twitter: A Career in Science Writing." Details here.

October 24, Pittsburgh: A discussion about the future of DNA editing at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetics Counselors.

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.

--That's it.

As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

This week I was in Baltimore to partake in the annual meeting of the American Society for Human Genetics, partly to find material for my next book on heredity, and partly to look for good stories to report. I envisioned a few peaceful days kicking back in dimly lit rooms, gazing at Manhattan plots. But news waits for no one, and so I ended up on the phone a fair amount of the time to file a couple stories. To wit:

--Why do elephants get so little cancer?

I'm pretty obsessed with the ways that cancer has shaped evolution. We've evolved lots of anti-cancer defenses, and so have other animals. I've previously written about how naked mole rats appear to use a special protein to put the brake on fast-dividing cells. This week in my New York Times "Matter" column, I looked at a pair of studies on elephants. The mortality rate from cancer is lower in elephants than in us--even though it should, in theory, be far higher. It looks as if they have a strategy of their own to fight the disease.

--The first ancient African genome

Here's another obsession: the illumination of human history with ancient DNA (see this piece I wrote in June on the history of Europe). In the news section of Friday's issue New York Times, I report on how scientists discovered a 4500-year-old skeleton of a man in Ethiopia and then retrieved his entire genome from his bones. His DNA contains some surprises--clues that living Africans are not "pure" Africans.

--Undark, a new magazine

Next spring, a new science magazine called Undark will launch, and I'll be on the advisory board. I'll give more details about it closer to its debut.

--Let's not infect Mars, okay?

Business Insider asked me to sit down with them and talk about some science news. The first video of that conversation is now out. I talk about life on Mars, and my worry that we may have contaminated it already.

--And finally, a list of upcoming talks

Later today (October 9) at 3 pm, I'll be at the Ragon Institute in Cambridge, MA, for a panel discussion about Stat, the new publication for which I'm now a national correspondent. See here for how to register.

October 21, Farmington, Connecticut, at the Jackson Laboratory: "From Viruses to Whales, From Newspapers to Twitter: A Career in Science Writing." Details here.

October 24, Pittsburgh: A discussion about the future of DNA editing at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetics Counselors.

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.

That's it. As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Greetings--

Thanks to everyone who responded about the pacing of Friday's Elk. I've decided to keep sending it out every week, although there may be a week here or there where I'll have to let a Friday slip by.

--This week, I'd like to draw your attention to crows.

Scientists have amassed a fascinating heap of evidence that crows and their corvid relatives have sophisticated brains, which they use to make tools, remember the location of hundreds of seed caches, distinguish between individual human faces, and so on. For my latest "Matter" column in The New York Times, I look at a particularly exceptional capacity of crows: their ability to pay careful attention to their dead. Check it out.

--On Wednesday, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry will be announced. Thompson Reuters predicts the scientists who developed the gene editing technique called CRISPR will win. That would be pretty astonishing, given that the technique is just a few years old, but the power of CRISPR cannot be denied. If you want to get up to speed in advance of this likely outcome, check out my story on how CRISPR was discovered (not invented), and this conversation about CRISPR I had with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich on RadioLab.

--Now that Hurricane Joaquin seems to be heading safely out to sea, I'm heading to the American Society for Human Genetics meeting next week. To any geneticists going there who are reading this: Let me know what you'll be presenting!

--To any science writers heading to ScienceWriters 2015 next Friday, please consider joining me for a panel discussion about Stat, the new publication for which I'm now a national correspondent. See here for how to register.

--And, finally, here's a list of other upcoming talks...

October 21, Farmington, Connecticut, at the Jackson Laboratory: "From Viruses to Whales, From Newspapers to Twitter: A Career in Science Writing." Details here.

October 24, Pittsburgh: A discussion about the future of DNA editing at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetics Counselors.

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.

That's it. As always, if you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.

Best wishes, Carl

Welcome back to Friday's Elk, a newsletter about what I'm up to. Thanks for subscribing!

After a summer hiatus, I'm going to start sending it out again on a regular basis. I'm still debating whether that should be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. I want to find the optimal tradeoff between frequency and information. (I don't think anybody wants daily emails that contain half a sentence each, nor does anyone want a once-a-decade tome.) If you have a preference, please let me know at carl@carlzimmer.com.

However it shakes out, I will stay true to the newsletter's name and send it out on a Friday.

In this issue, I'm going to point to some stuff I've been up to since the last newsletter, and then let you know about some things to come. It's an exciting time of change...

--I’ve continued to write my weekly "Matter" column for the New York Times. This week I wrote about the dramatic evolution that created cheese. More to come, of course. If you're interested, please check out the Matter archive.

--Earlier this month, my brother Ben and I were subjects of a fun fraternal profile in the New York Observer.

--Looking forward, on October 9th, the second edition of A Planet of Viruses will be out.

--I am also starting a new gig as a national correspondent for Stat. Stat, a new online publication about medicine and the life sciences, was founded earlier this year by Boston Globe Media. It's now led by Rick Berke, who previously worked as executive editor at Politico and assistant managing editor at the New York Times. He has assembled a great team at Stat, which will have its official launch in October.

I will be doing a mix of things for Stat each month (some writing, some other stuff). I'll provide more details in Friday's Elk next month.

If you're in Boston next month (for Science Writers 2015, for example) you can join me at a panel on the launch of Stat at MIT on Friday October 9. Details about when and where are here.

--Taking a cold-eyed look at the work I've taken on--my Times column, my work at Stat, and a new book --I've realized I need to rejigger my workload or risk spontaneous combustion.

That's why I'm putting the Loom on a break for the next year. National Geographic will continue to archive the Loom’s twelve (!!) years’ worth of posts. The science tattoo emporium is going nowhere. Eventually, I’ll be back. And, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and discover the delightful blogging of Brian, Ed, Erika, Maryn, Nadia, and Robert at Phenomena.

--Also, I have some talks coming up...

On October 21, I'll be in Farmington, Connecticut, at the Jackson Laboratory, where I will give a public talk, "From Viruses to Whales, From Newspapers to Twitter: A Career in Science Writing." Details here.

On October 24, I'll be in Pittsburgh, talking about the future of DNA editing at the annual conference of the National Society of Genetics Counselors.

On November 13, I'll be in Providence, RI, speaking at the National Association of Biology Teachers, where I'll have the honor of receiving their Distinguished Service Award.

On November 19, I'll be moderating a panel at the New York City Genome Center about how genomics has changed how Jews think about their identity. It's free and open to the public. Details here.

On January 28, I'll be speaking at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. Details to come.

If you have friends whom would you think would enjoy getting this newsletter, please let them know they can sign up at http://tinyletter.com/carlzimmer.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com

Best wishes, Carl