The Ed's Up #102

                            September 23, 2015

                The Ed's Up #102

How Genome Sequencing Creates Communities Around Rare Disorders
In 2013, I told the story of Lilly Grossman, a girl who discovered the genetic fault behind her mysterious disease by having her genome sequenced--a discovery that helped her to sleep soundly for the first time in a dozen years, and that gave her a future. I caught up with her family again last month. "With Lilly about to start at college, their spirits are still up—and for reasons beyond simply buying time. Lilly's case has acted as a magnet for others with the same mutation. Families with the same problem read about Lilly’s case and contacted the Grossmans. Doctors and geneticists looked at their own patients and saw a new explanation behind puzzling symptoms. Before, there were isolated pockets of people around the world, dealing with their own problems, alone for all they knew. Now, there’s a community." (Image: Gay Grossman) 

Bonus: Here's a follow-up piece about another family going through the same process. 

Mantis Shrimps Avoid Deadly Fights by Pummeling Each Other
In this way, the mantis shrimps are behaving a bit like deer or antelope that lock horns and push against one another. They’re testing strength and stamina—they’re just doing it through the unconventional means of punching the shit out of each other. They don’t use signals to avoid coming to blows, because the blows are the signals. (Image: Roy Caldwell) 

Bonus: A follow-up about their totally overrated eyes. 

The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses in Your Blood
“When people analyze samples from people who are ill, they have some idea in mind. This is probably an enterovirus, or maybe it's a herpesvirues. They then do a specific assay for that particular agent. They don't usually have the capacity to look broadly.” The new system, known as VirCapSeq-VERT, barrels past this limitation. Lipkin designed it to detect all known human viruses, quickly, efficiently, and  sensitively. By searching for thousands, perhaps millions, of viruses at once, it should take a lot of the (educated) guesswork  out of viral diagnosis. (Image: CDC)

How Climate Change Shrank the Tongues of Long-Tongued Bumblebees
If you think about iconic symbols of climate change, you’ll probably picture a polar bear, emaciated, and clinging to a precariously small chunk of ice. You’re probably not thinking of a bumblebee, flitting about an alpine meadow with a shorter-than-average tongue. And yet, according to new research from Nicole Miller-Struttmann from SUNY College at Old Westbury, these shrinking tongues speak volumes about how nature’s most intimate partnerships might change in a warming world. (Image: D Sikes)

Why Sea Monkeys Love Salt: A Fable on the Cost of Symbiosis
These little creatures are more formally known as brine shrimp, or Artemia. As their name suggests, they live in salty water, but they evolved from freshwater ancestors. They cope with salt by efficiently pumping it out of their own bloodstreams. The saltier the water, the harder they have to work and the more energy they burn. So you’d expect that Artemia does best in mildly salty water. In fact, they can’t tolerate the stuff. At more than 40 grams of salt per litre, they’re fine. Below that threshold, they’re less likely to survive. Bizarre! Surely, it should be the other way round?" (Image: Hans Hillewaert)

More good reads

This is a superb piece about people who earn a living by being guinea pigs in clinical trials. By Cari Romm
Home aquarium coral poisons 10.5 humans, 3 pets by "exud[ing] some sort of creeping death mist." Crazy story by Jennifer Frazer
Turing Pharmaceuticals raises the price of a toxoplasmosis drug by 50 times. Derek Lowe covers the fallout.
"Unfortunately, Megan Fox does not make epistemology easy for us." The Onion has created a celebrity news site, and it's excellent.
Ryan Bradley charmingly meets the charming giant kangaroo rat, in a "harsh land growing harsher".
A universal huh. A new study shows that people everywhere navigate potential misunderstandings in roughly the same three ways. By Olga Khazan
A reexamination of old data for Paxil found that the antidepressant is more dangerous than the authors let on. How much harm has been done in the 14 years since it was published? David Dobbs discusses
The Fukushima disaster's radiation killed no one. The disaster's real cost is in mental health. By George Johnson
How a 1930s dentist's trip around the world spawned today's Paleo fad—and some dangerous ideas about health. By Emily Matchar

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed

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