The Ed's Up #142

Book news

• August 13th - New York City, Festival of the Unknown
• August 16th - Washington DC, Politics and Prose bookstore
• August 31st – London, Science Museum
• September 1st – Liverpool, Genome Science 2016 conference (not public) 
• September 1st – London, Royal Institution
• September 7th – Oxford, Skeptics in the Pub
• September 13th – Phoenix/Tempe, Arizona State University 
• September 22nd – Boston, hosted by Undark
• September 27th – New York City, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
• October 12th – London, London Literature Festival
• October 16th – Bradford, Ilkley Literature Festival
• November 16th – London, UCL, Biology in Action (not public) 

Why Some Coral Reefs Are Thriving

"Amid the gloom and tears, Cinner and his colleagues went searching for bright spots. Mimicking Sternin, they looked for reefs that house more fish than expected, relative to other reefs facing comparable pressures. And their surprising results are upending traditional assumptions about what makes a healthy reef. Contrary to what you might think, the bright spots weren’t all remote reefs, where humans were absent or fishing was banned. Instead, most were home to lots of people, who rely heavily on the corals and who frequently fished. They weren’t leaving the corals and fish alone; instead, they had developed social norms and institutions that allowed them to manage the reefs responsibly." (Image: Tane Sinclair-Taylor)
 

Don’t Stress About Your Baby’s Microbiome Just Yet

"But in both studies, the drugs had small and temporary effects. They changed things, but only by a bit, and never permanently. The microbes quickly recover and catch up. By the time the antibiotic-treated infants celebrated their first or second birthdays, their gut microbiomes were just as diverse and resilient as those of their drug-free peers. Indeed, despite the much-hyped connection between early antibiotic use and obesity, Xavier’s team found no such link: the babies who took antibiotics didn’t put on any more weight than those who avoided the drugs." (Image: Ballyscanlon) 
 

RIP Bob Paine, A Keystone Among Ecologists

"I’m deeply saddened to learn that Bob Paine, a giant of ecology, passed away yesterday. You may not know his name, but you almost certainly know the ideas that he pioneered. Back in 1963, Paine began prying ochre starfish off a rocky beach in Washington and hurling them into the sea. After a year, the mussels that the starfish would normally have eaten had overrun the beach, turning a wonderland of limpets, anemones, and barnacles into a monoculture of black gaping shells. The experiment was ground-breaking." (Image: Marian Kohn) 
 

Baby Frogs Have a Super-Speedy Way to Escape Snakes

"How does a frog save itself when it hasn’t even been born? Every red-eyed tree frog must confront this dilemma. The frogs lay their eggs on plants that lie over ponds. After a week, the tadpoles hatch and drop into the water—at least in theory. In practice, many of the defenceless, immobile, exposed, yummy eggs are devoured by snakes or wasps. Fortunately, they have a solution: super-fast hatching." (Image: Karen Warkentin) 
 

Sacrificing One Species to Change the Color of Another

"Almost a century ago, bird breeders turned canaries red. They repeatedly hybridized the bright yellow birds with a striking Venezuelan finch called the red siskin, and so moved the gene responsible for the siskin’s vermillion plumage into the canaries. In the process, the canary became “the first organism to be manipulated by genetic technology.” I wrote about this story last month, after scientists finally identified the gene responsible for the birds’ red colors. What I didn’t mention was that the siskins gave more than their genes. They also gave their lives." (South Rupununi Conservation Society) 
 

More good reads

• “I will never be safe, but I will forever be proud.” Matt Thompson, a gay man who grew up in Orlando, responds to the mass shooting with this beautiful call for compassion and empathy. Do read it.
• How Science Is Putting a New Face on Crime Solving: this Veronique Greenwood piece is a textbook example of confronting uncertainty in science
•  “In the 13 years since it came out, I've had more than 100 inaccuracies pointed out to me. Only one is an actual error.” Adam Summers, the scientific advisor to Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, has such a refreshing and mature take on scientific “accuracy” in movies.
• This New Yorker parody is astonishing in its scope. I lost it at the Gladwell ad and at the intro to the Knotty by Nature feature.
• The Tuskegee Experiment Kept Killing Black People Decades After It Ended. Horrifying, by Jesse Singal
• Reprogrammed stem cells were discovered ten years ago, by scientists who’ve since become Nobel laureates. Have the cells really changed the world? Megan Scudellari explores.
• Is banning plastic bags good for the environment? Ben Adler says it’s complicated
• “The only beneficiary of war is medicine.” Julia Belluz on what trauma doctors are learning from battlefield medicine, and how they’re using that to save the victims of mass shootings.
• “What would happen if all the active volcanoes in the world erupted at the same time? The short answer is: bad things. The long answer is...” in this latest episode of Rose Eveleth’s Flash Forward
• Mongolia is changing all its addresses to three-word phrases. By Joon Ian Wong
• “For the first time in the history of our species, entire generations of people have never seen our galaxy.” Rebecca Boyle on the disappearing Milky Way
• “Every plant breathes in the whole planet.” By Robert Krulwich
• There are 35 kinds of animals on the planet. Wormy thing, wormy thing, blobby thing, wormy thing, wormy thing, yeah they’re basically all worms. By Melissa Hogenboom
• And finally, the Kermit Sutra. Here are all the seven mating positions of frogs, including a new one just discovered. Note: “glued”. No “froggy style”. No “ribbit for her pleasure”. I’ll stop now.

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed