Happy 2017! (I confess, I had to correct that from "2016" just before sending this out.)
This week I wrote a column about migrations. There's something endlessly fascinating about migratory animals: namely, the huge amount of things we don't understand about them. We're not sure how they manage to make the same journeys every year. Sometimes it's hard to know why they bother. Sometimes we don't even quite know the course they take.
For this week's Times column, I looked at new technologies that are revealing how birds sync their migrations for thousand of miles to the seasonal cycles of plants, ensuring that whenever they land, there's food to eat. Like so many things in the natural world, this new research shows, climate change may prove incredibly disruptive to these migrations. (Image: Palle Sørensen)
(I've written about animal migrations before here and here and here.)
This week I also wrote a story for Nautilus about the birth of biotechnology. As is so often the case, a powerful application emerged out of pure curiosity. That should be a lesson to people who think scientists should only study things they know in advance will benefit humanity.
January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival I will be speaking about the year in viruses, both on Saturday at 3:40 pm and on Sunday at 12:40 pm. Full schedule here.
March 2-3, 2017 San Diego. The Future of Genome Medicine. Details here.
You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.
Best wishes, Carl
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