The Ed's Up #59
What Disco Fog Taught Us About Iguana Lungs Froggys Fog Swamp Juice is billed as “the world’s greatest fog”. According to the manufacturers, it produces a...
The Ed's Up #58
Contaminomics: Why Some Microbiome Studies May Be Wrong This is arguably one of the most important microbiome studies this year. A team of scientists has...
The Ed's Up #57
There Is No ‘Healthy’ Microbiome In this essay, my first for the New York Times, I argue that the quest for a “healthy” microbiome is an illusion, based on a...
The Ed's Up #56
A Personalised Mini-Stomach, Grown in a Dish "In a lab at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, a series of small blobs sit in a Petri dish. They’re...
The Ed's Up #55
Deinocheirus Exposed: Meet The Body Behind the Terrible Hand For 50 years, the dinosaur was just a pair of arms. Now, two specimens reveal the full body of...
The Ed's Up #54
A Flood of Borrowed Genes at the Origins of Tiny Extremists This is a wonderful story about one domain of life driving the evolution of another. The archaea...
The Ed's Up #53
Cave-Exploring Snake Robot Gets Inspiration From Sidewinders "Three years ago, a robotic snake called Elizabeth slithered into Egyptian caves to search for...
The Ed's Up #52
The Human Genome Is In Stalemate in the War Against Itself "The human genome is engaged in a similar evolutionary arms race… against itself. The opponents...
The Ed's Up #51
When Your Prey’s in a Hole and You Don’t Have a Pole, Use a Moray Coral trout recruit moray eels to flush prey from crevices. They also recruit partners only...
The Ed's Up #50
With Evolutionary Rocket Fuel, Bacteria Give Peas a Chance Many bacteria have evolved partnerships with plants, by picking up large packages of genes that...
The Ed's Up #49
When You Move House, Your Microbial Aura Moves Too As soon as we move into a space, we inject microbes into it, and those bugs colonise the area within 24...
The Ed's Up #48
DIY diagnosis: how an extreme athlete uncovered her genetic flaw If you read one thing from this newsletter, I'd recommend this one. It's a story about Kim...
The Ed's Up #47
A Swarm of a Thousand Cooperative, Self-Organising Robots "In a lab at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, the world’s largest swarm of cooperative robots is building...
The Ed's Up #46
On The Evolution of Migration Migration evolved from stagnation. The ancestors of these birds stayed in the same place all-year round, and gradually, they...
The Ed's Up #45
Cancer biomarkers: Written in blood (Longread) "When cancer cells rupture and die, they release their contents, including circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA):...
The Ed's Up #44
Why Has This Really Common Virus Only Just Been Discovered? A newly discovered virus called crAssphage lives in the majority of people, and there's lots of...
The Ed's Up #43
Lizard “Sees” With Its Skin For Automatic Camouflage The Moorish gecko can change colour to match its surroundings even when it's blindfolded. How? It has...
The Ed's Up #42
These Microbes Drive The Planet’s Breath And Ocean’s Pulse"A few years ago, a team of scientists took an expensive robot, attached it to a buoy floating off...
The Ed's Up #41
Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans"Tibetan people can survive on the roof of the world—one of the most inhospitable places that anybody...
The Ed's Up #40
Sleeping Through the BlitzIt's not just antibiotic-resistant bacteria that we have to worry about. Hit bacteria with antibiotics and they can evolve...