The Ed's Up #119
Inside the Eye
My first feature story for National Geographic is up. It’s about the evolution of the eye, in all its unpredictable messiness and glorious diversity. David Liittschwager did such an astonishing job on the visuals (as in the mantis shrimp above); and here's a sampling of my words:
"The box jellyfish’s eyes are part of an almost endless variation of eyes in the animal kingdom. Some see only in black and white; others perceive the full rainbow and beyond, to forms of light invisible to our eyes. Some can’t even gauge the direction of incoming light; others can spot running prey miles away. The smallest animal eyes, adorning the heads of fairy wasps, are barely bigger than an amoeba; the biggest are the size of dinner plates, and belong to gigantic squid species. The squid’s eye, like ours, works as a camera does, with a single lens focusing light onto a single retina, full of photoreceptors—cells that absorb photons and convert their energy into an electrical signal. By contrast, a fly’s compound eye divides incoming light among thousands of separate units, each with its own lens and photoreceptors. Human, fly, and squid eyes are mounted in pairs on their owners’ heads. But scallops have rows of eyes along their mantles, sea stars have eyes on the tips of their arms, and the purple sea urchin’s entire body acts as one big eye. There are eyes with bifocal lenses, eyes with mirrors, and eyes that look up, down, and sideways all at the same time."
You’re Probably Not Mostly Microbes
"We are, supposedly, outnumbered in our own bodies. We play host to an extraordinary menagerie of bacteria and other microbes—the microbiome—and it’s frequently said that these teeming cells outnumber our own by ten to one. This 10:1 ratio crops up everywhere. It appears in scientific papers, blog posts, magazine stories, TED talks, and popular science books—sometimes, even in the very title. It is undoubtedly one of the most famous statistics about the microbiome. And it’s probably wrong." (Image: Carlo Allegri)
The Quest to Make a Better Mosquito Repellent
"It’s not easy for a human to find a mosquito that doesn’t want to be found, but a mosquito can locate us quite easily. It’s a human-seeking machine, sculpted by evolution to track the warmth of our bodies, the carbon dioxide in our breath, the smelly chemicals dissipating from our skin, and even our appearance. Vosshall has spent eight years deciphering how these creatures process these cues, in a bid to befuddle their senses and create a better generation of insect repellents. It’s a quest that has been beset by surprises and failures, which have left her with a newfound appreciation for these annoying insects—even the one that, finally, she finds and kills." (Image: James Gathany)
Low-Fiber Diets Cause Waves of Extinction in the Gut
"Fiber is a broad term that includes many kinds of plant carbohydrates that we cannot digest. Our microbes can, though, and they break fiber into chemicals that nourish our cells and reduce inflammation. But no single microbe can tackle every kind of fiber. They specialize, just as every antelope in the African savannah munches on its own favored type of grass or shoot. This means that a fiber-rich diet can nourish a wide variety of gut microbes and, conversely, that a low-fiber diet can only sustain a narrower community." (Image: Francisco Bonilla) More good reads
- Here's the story of the first ever artificial insemination, and OH MY GOD, WHAT? By Elizabeth Yuko.
- "Does science set itself up for a fall by appropriating the trappings of myth, legend, magic, or science fiction?" Philip Ball visits a lab where “invisibility cloaks” are made, and is a little disappointed.
- The Outcome of My Clinical Trial Is a Mystery. Emma Yasinski on a big medical problem.
- We won't understand the origin of life if we don't think about energy. Tim Requarth is exactly right here
- Olga Khazan interviews the wonderful Maria Konnikova about her new book on cons and con artistry.
- The Surprising (and Mostly Legal) Trade in "Mermaid Ivory". Really interesting piece by John Platt.
- The science of boredom is, in the hands of Maggie Koerth-Baker, decidedly not boring.
- A behind-the-scenes look at how nutrition studies are done and why most of them are rubbish. By Christie Aschwanden.
- And finally… The perfect person to interview Daisy Ridley about fame and Star Wars? Carrie Fisher.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed