The Ed's Up #170

So, that happened...


An Ingenious Experiment of Jungle Bats and Evolving Artificial Flowers

"And here’s the wonderful bit: Nachev and Winter allowed the artificial flowers to evolve. Each had a virtual genome—a set of four genes that determined the concentration of its nectar. If a bat moved between two of them, a computer assumed that it had transferred virtual pollen across, and combined the flowers’ genes to create virtual seeds. Over the course of an evening, the flowers that were best at attracting bats produced the most seeds. The next night, the computer recalibrated the field of flowers by randomly selecting 23 of the seeds, and using their genomes to set the nectar on offer. From the bats’ perspective, little changed from night to night. But in the virtual world, a new generation of fake flowers bloomed with every new sunset. And Nachev and Winter could watch the evolution of their nectar in fast-forward." (Image: USFWS) 
 

Obama: The Ocean President

"In August 1961, Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, thousands of miles from the American mainland. He spent 14 of his first 18 years on those islands, bodysurfing off Sandy Beach Park, surrounded by the expansive blue of the Pacific. He later moved inland, to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and eventually the White House. But he never lost his childhood connection to the sea. When he leaves the Oval Office this month, he will have safeguarded more of the ocean than any other president, and increased the amount of protected waters around the U.S. by four times." (Image: Reuters)
 

Why Do Humans Still Have a Gene That Increases the Risk of Alzheimer's?

""The apoliprotein E gene, or ApoE, comes in three forms—E2, E3, and E4. The last one is the problem. People who carry one copy have a three-fold higher risk of Alzheimer’s than those with none. And those with two copies, as Tyrone carries, have 8- to 12-fold higher risks. Between 51 and 68 percent of them will develop the disease by the time they are 85. Despite all these drawbacks, the ApoE4 variant is surprisingly common. A quarter of white Americans carry a single copy, as do more than a third of African Americans. “It doesn’t make sense,” says Ben Trumble, from Arizona State University. “You’d have thought that natural selection would have weeded out ApoE4 a long time ago. The fact that we have it at all is a little bizarre.” Trumble has now found an answer to this puzzle after studying the Tsimane, a group of indigenous people from the Bolivian Amazon." (Image: Edgard Garrido)

 

More good reads in science and technology

• One Man’s Quest to Change the Way We Die. An early contender for piece of the year, by Jon Mooallem who continually cements his reputation as one of the greatest writers working today.
• “Not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.” Players react to being beaten by an AI.
• We're entering a new age of disease and this Alaskan vet is on the frontlines. A beautiful piece by Chris Solomon.
• A story about a chemist with a broken heart, from Alice Bell’s wonderful newsletter about historical tales from the world of climate change.
• "During the height of the eugenics movement, California sterilized 20,000 patients deemed feeble-minded or insane." Important story from Sarah Zhang
• "Flying squirrels have a marked disregard for basic aerodynamic constraints". By Alexander Badyaev
• The Mitochondrial Minefield of Three-Parent Babies. A really thorough piece by Jill Neimark
• Granny, the world's oldest known killer whale, dies
• Yep, the Earth’s oceans really are getting warmer. No, there was no slowdown.
• Face-selective brain region continues to grow in adulthood.
• CDC keeps secret its mishaps with deadly germs.
• 7 CRISPR stories to watch for in 2017
• Tightened rules for antibiotics for food livestock go into effect
• How do you dismantle a 90-ton whale? From the inside out.
• "There’s no scientist who comes out of this unscathed.” On taking funding from agrochemical companies. 

More good reads in politics and society

• “Millions of snowflakes together can make an avalanche, a hurricane, a killing frost.” An exceptional and wise piece from Laurie Penny about what strength really means.
• Did Inadequate Women’s Healthcare Destroy the Old Republic? Wonderful piece by Sarah Jeong; read right to the very end.
• "The sixties produced a conviction that “democracy is in the streets.” The Trump era may echo that." Jelani Cobb on the return of civil disobedience.
• “We are headed for a new age of official embrace or at least acceptance of unethical and illegal behavior.” Norm Ornstein on the GOP’s attempt to gut an ethics office. And more from Judd Legun about what the new rules would have meant.
• “Presidents often throw intelligence agencies under the bus when they fail. Never before has a president-elect thrown them under the bus for succeeding.” By Amy Zegart
• The Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world. A breach would cause a colossal wave that could kill as many as a million and a half people. By Dexter Filkins
• "Remember the arc is long... Remember the arc is not inevitable." John Scalzi on fighting for progress
• A New Age of Walls. An incredible multimedia Washington Post story about the barriers that are dividing our nations.
• This podcast where Ezra Klein interviews Ta-Nehisi Coates is worth every minute
• Obama's Environmental Legacy, in Two Buttes
• "This is crony capitalism, with potentially devastating consequences." Why corporations are helping Trump lie about jobs
• What happens if a president loses the mental capability to do his job -- and also can't recognize that reality?
• Really interesting piece on the "eco-right"—the Republicans who want to do something about climate change.
• An incredible searchable archive of Trump’s tweets, speeches, and policy.
• House Republicans revive obscure rule that allows them to slash the pay of individual federal workers to $1.
• Being Trans, and an Immigrant, Under the Trump Administration.
• GOP launches long-promised repeal of Obamacare with no full plan to replace it
• One of the biggest legal guns in the country is coming for partisan gerrymandering
• 99 good things from 2016