The Ed's Up #172
Speaking of which, on the assumption that many of you will need an extra pick-me-up today, I highly recommend that you spend a couple of minutes with this wonderful animated video from The Atlantic. It's about the story behind Obama's iconic phrase: Fired up, ready to go.
A Global Plan to Defend Against the Future's Deadliest Diseases
“Everyone who went through the Ebola situation agrees that it can’t happen again,” says Nancy Lee, a senior policy advisor at the Wellcome Trust. It won’t, if a new international coalition called CEPI—the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—has its way. CEPI (pronounced “seppy”) is a global vaccine-development fund, devoted to readying pandemic defenses during peacetime. With $460 million from the Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the governments of Germany, Japan, and Norway, it will fund the development of vaccines against the likely pandemics of the future, testing them as far as possible, and stockpiling millions of doses. When outbreaks happen, the vaccines will be immediately ready for field-testing and mass-manufacture." (Image: Michael Duff)
How Reliable Are Cancer Studies?
"The hardest part, by far, was figuring out exactly what the original labs actually did. Scientific papers come with methods sections that theoretically ought to provide recipes for doing the same experiments. But often, those recipes are incomplete, missing out important steps, details, or ingredients. In some cases, the recipes aren’t described at all; researchers simply cite an earlier study that used a similar technique. “I’ve done it myself: you reference a previous paper and that one references a paper and that one references a paper, and now you’ve gone years and the methodology doesn’t exist,” admit Errington. “Most people looking at these papers wouldn’t even think of going through these steps. They’d just guess. If you asked 20 different labs to replicate a paper, you’d end up with 10 different methodologies that aren’t really comparable.”" (Image: Adam Gault)
Tragedy Would Unfold If Trump Cancels Bush’s AIDS Program
"In 2003, in a move that has been described as his greatest legacy, George W. Bush created a program called PEPFAR—the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. At the time, more than 20 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with AIDS, but only 50,000 had access to antiretroviral drugs that manage the disease and prevent its spread. Now, thanks to PEPFAR, 11.5 million people are on those drugs. For good reason, it has been variously described as a “globally transformative lifeline,” “one of the best government programs in American history,” and something “for all Americans to be proud of.” It seems that some members of President-Elect Trump’s transition team beg to differ." (Image: Denis Farrell) 
Decoding the Origami That Drives All Life
"Robert Lang is a master of origami, known for his elegant and almost impossibly accurate sculptures. On his website, you can find his “crease patterns”—all the folds that go into his compositions, drawn out on flat sheets of paper. The patterns are beautiful in their own right, not least because it is almost impossible to look at one and divine what it will eventually become. How could you ever guess that this would become a beetle, or that this folds into a rhino, or that this is a tarantula-in-the-making? That challenge, incidentally, is exactly what many scientists have struggled with for decades, because life—all life—depends on origami." (Image: Yuriko Nakao) More good reads on science and technology
- “Science is the pursuit of knowledge, knowledge is power, and power is politics.” Liz Lopatto explains why science is absolutely political and it’s absurd to argue otherwise.
- Most primate species are threatened with extinction because of one primate species, say team of 31 primates. By Carl Zimmer, also a primate.
- “The plants bloomed, the pathway lengthened, and the project caught on.” Michelle Nijhuis on a lovely project creating corridors for tiny pollinators.
- Remember when 2014 was the hottest year on record? Then 2015? Well, now it’s 2016. Brad Plumer reports.
- A superb Story Collider double bill, with Brian Mackenwells on the vomit comet, and Jess Thom about living with Tourette’s.
- Why loads of scientists started sharing their best carcass photos on Twitter. By Joanna Klein
- "The discovery marks the first time that any type of viral communication system has ever been found"
- Researchers have found a switch that seems to turn on a mouse’s predatory instincts.
- This soft robot hugs your heart to help keep it pumping
- NASA’s $2.4-billion plan to steal a rock from Mars.
- FamilyTreeNow is one of many unregulated online people-search sites that makes stalking easy
- Scientists Have a New Idea About the Origins of Namibia's Fairy Circles.
More good reads on politics and technology
- "Letter from Birmingham Jail": Martin Luther King Jr. on the moral responsibility to break unjust laws. Still an essential read.
- "Only a heedless few would reject his judgment out of hand, no matter how wounding." David Remnick on John Lewis, his long struggle for civil rights, and why he’s Trump’s polar opposite. Similarly, Dara Lind writes that "John Lewis is the leader dissenters need in the age of Donald Trump."
- While Scott Pruitt was busy suing the agency he may now lead, man-made earthquakes were going off in his own state. By Robinson Meyer.
- Well-reported and measured piece on whether regulations actually kill jobs, as the GOP likes to claim. By Alana Semuels
- "The American Dream’s true believers, blinded by their own optimism, destroy the dream itself." Derek Thompson on the dark side of American optimism.
- What We Learned (And Didn’t) About potential EPA head Scott Pruitt At His Confirmation Hearing. By Maggie Koerth-Baker
- Trump could empower a shadow network of anti-vaccination doctors. By Olga Khazan
- Counter-intuitively Obama might have just expanded the NSA's power so Trump couldn't go even further.
- "No matter what he says, we still know what we know." Helen Lewis on the “gaslighter-in-chief”
- Tom Price, Trump's health pick, invested in a medical company and then introduced a bill in Congress to help it.
- From vaccine myths to birtherism, here are ten times Trump personally helped to spread fake news.
- The WaPo is tracking the 690 positions that Trump needs to fill; he’s off to a slow start.
- "The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely."
- Trump will take office as most unpopular president in at least 4 decades
- Nixon's lawyer John Dean on Trump: "He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested."
- The next step in fake news: fake factcheckers.
- Trump’s “hoax” tweet has set a ridiculously low bar for his nominees on climate change
- "Are you or are you not a dark wizard who, in repeatedly naming this reality, has summoned it into being?" Julie Beck interviews Matt Novak, who’s been counting down to Trump’s inauguration for 1.5 years on Twitter.
- And then they came for the endangered species
- What parts of Obamacare can the GOP actually repeal?
- In Switzerland, you can be denied citizenship for being too ‘annoying
And finally... in the last issue, I mispelled my colleague McKay Coppins’ name as McKay Robbins. Sorry McKay! I’ll buy you a coffee when I’m in the office.
You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic. My New York Times-bestselling book, I Contain Multitudes, is out now. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.
And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed