The Ed's Up #160
Book news
I Contain Multitudes made the Publisher's Weekly list of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2016! And you can also vote for the book in the Goodreads Choice Awards.
A Desert Lizard That Drinks From Sand
"It’s early morning in the Australian desert, and a squat, palm-sized lizard called the thorny devil is having a drink. It hasn’t rained for weeks, and there’s no water in sight. The lizard’s body is still and its head is raised. And yet, through almost no effort, it is quenching its thirst. Its secret lies in its extraordinary skin. Between the intimidating and ostentatious spikes, there’s a subtle network of microscopic grooves. These can yank water out of moist sand, drawing the fluid up against the pull of gravity, across the lizard’s body, and into its waiting mouth. All it needs to do is to stand in the right spot and without flexing a muscle, it can drink with its skin." (Image: Christophe Watson)
How Ebola Adapted to Us
"In December 2013, in a small village in Guinea, the Ebola virus left its traditional host—probably a bat—and infected a young boy. That leap triggered what became the largest Ebola outbreak in history. By the time it was finally brought to heel in 2016, more than 28,000 people had been infected and 11,000 of them were dead. The unprecedented scale of the outbreak gave the virus ample opportunities to adapt to its new human hosts—and it took advantage of them. Two independent teams of scientists have shown that in early 2014, Ebola virus picked up a mutation called A82V, which made it worse at infecting bat cells, but better at infecting human ones. And once viruses with that mutation appeared, they quickly took over." (Image: NIAID)
How the Mouse Got Its Stripes
"In The Second Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling tells the story of the first tiger, who killed a buck during a time of peace. As punishment, the first elephant commanded the jungle’s trees and creepers to mark the tiger, “drawing their fingers across his back, his flank, his forehead, and his jowl.” Hence: stripes. That fanciful tale was a predecessor to Kipling’s later Just So Stories for Little Children, and it’s one of many folk tales explaining why tigers are striped, or why zebras are striped, or why leopards are spotted. Mammalian coats, after all, are conspicuous, beautiful, and charismatic. They demand explanation. And yet, we know very little about their actual origins, about the genes and molecules that produce these striking patterns. That’s largely because the mammal that scientists do the most experimental work upon—the laboratory mouse—is not striped." (Image: J F Broekhuis)
DNA Reveals That Chimps and Bonobos Had Sex in the Past
"As they explored the genomes of the central chimps, they kept on finding sequences that seemed to come from bonobos—a closely related ape, which tends to be smaller and gentler. “At first, we thought: Pffft, this is just a mistake,” says Hvilsom. “But we continued with a variety of techniques and kept on seeing this trend.” The team eventually confirmed that central chimps (and to a lesser extent, the eastern and Nigeria-Cameroon ones) owe some of their DNA to their bonobo relatives. It’s a tiny proportion—less than 1 percent—but it’s there nonetheless. And this implies that the two apes must have successfully mated at some point in the past." (Image: Finbarr O'Reilly)More good reads
- The extended trailer for Planet Earth II, airing in a few hours in the UK. Everything’s going to be okay.
- How you can fight Donald Trump right now. By David Leonhardt.
- How bird vomit helps us understand history. By Emily Graslie
- Sharon Begley on the devastating consequences on inaccurate genetic tests
- Climate change could extend the Sahara desert into southern Spain. By Robinson Meyer
- How the Concept of Deep Time Is Changing. By David Farrier
- The Dairy Industry Lost $420 Million From a Flaw in a Single Bull. By Sarah Zhang
- Pretty great visualisation of how the world's health has changed since you were born
- Terrorists Hamper Polio Eradication Efforts in Africa. By Maryn McKenna
- How one guy's statistical incompetence ruined decades of English football. By Joe Sykes and Neil Paine
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.