The Ed's Up #138
Book stuff
I Contain Multitudes is 11 weeks away from publication, and is available to pre-order on Amazon. I just gave my first talk about it at the University of Michigan, and more events are planned in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Phoenix, Boston, London, Oxford, and more. Dates and details to follow.In the meantime, a couple of new people have provided blurbs, which I'm extremely grateful for. Jeff Vandermeer, author of the amazing Southern Reach Trilogy, said: “A marvelous book! Ed Yong’s brilliant gift for storytelling and precise writing about science converge in I Contain Multitudes to make the invisible and tiny both visible and mighty. A unique, entertaining, and smart read.” And Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer-winning The Sixth Extinction, said: "Ed Yong has written a riveting account of the microbes that make the world work. "I Contain Multitudes" will change the way you look and yourself --- and just about everything else."
The Plan to Avert Our Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse
"The report’s language is sober but its numbers are apocalyptic. If antibiotics continue to lose their sting, resistant infections will sap $100 trillion from the world economy between now and 2050, equivalent to $10,000 for every person alive today. Ten million people will die every year, roughly one every three seconds, and more than currently die from cancer. These are conservative estimates: They don’t account for procedures that are only safe or possible because of antibiotics, like hip and joint replacements, gut surgeries, C-sections, cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplants. And yet, resistance is not futile." (Image: Fabrizio Bensch)
The Gene That Paints Birds Red
"Throughout those centuries of breeding canaries, one color remained elusive—red. The birds traversed the rainbow, but no hint of red had ever shown up in their feathers. So in the 1920s, German breeders decided to cross canaries with a closely related species—the red siskin of Venezuela. They then mated the hybrids with more canaries, selecting offspring with red feathers, but as few other siskin traits as possible. The result, after many generations, was the ‘red-factor canary’—a bird that looks exactly like a typical yellow canary, but with bright red plumes. “The canary thus became the first animal that was purposely genetically modified by moving the genes from another species into it,” says Geoffrey Hill from Auburn University." (Image: Life on White)
Contagious Canine Cancer Changed its Batteries
Around 11,000 years ago, a dog became immortal. One of its cells started growing and dividing uncontrollably, giving rise to a tumour. And one of the cells from that tumour became contagious. It gained the ability to leave its original host and infect new ones. It jumped into another dog, and another, and another, creating a fresh tumour in each new host. That original dog is long dead, but in a way, it lives on in the contagious cancer that it spawned. (Image: Daniel Mihailescu)More good reads
- Megan Garber’s epic piece on the history, technology, and sociology of high heels has a superb line in virtually every paragraph. It’s utterly fascinating. (Now with working link!)
- “Stung by a tarantula hawk wasp? The advice I give in speaking engagements is to lie down and scream.” Justin Schmidt, creator of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, has written a book and it sounds amazing.
- The Invisibility of Black Autism, by Steve Silberman
- Carl Zimmer profiles Eske Willerslev, the geneticist rewriting human history with DNA
- And finally… Bowiebranchia: Nudibranchs that look like David Bowie
And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed
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