The Ed's Up #194
The Man Who Blew The Door Off The Microbial World
"A few years before Norm Pace revolutionized the study of life on Earth, he almost lost his own life. During one of his expeditions into Yochib--one of the most dangerous caves in the world--the bolt that was holding his rope popped out. He fell, straight into the path of a waterfall. His companions tried to pull him up, but failed. They headed back to the surface, sure that they had just seen their friend die. But Pace was very much alive. He had used his helmet to create an air pocket, which allowed him to breathe amid the cascading water. Slowly, he climbed his way out. His friends were trying to work out how to recover his body, when said body walked up to them and calmly sat down." (Image: Jim Urquhart)
The Success of Paying People to Not Cut Down Trees
"Most deforestation occurs in low-income countries. So one way of resolving these misaligned interests is for rich countries, or international funders like the World Bank, to pay people in poor countries not to chop down trees, creating an incentive to protect their forests. In 2011, Seema Jayachandran, from Northwestern University selected 121 villages and offered the scheme to half of them, chosen at random. This experiment marks the first time the approach has ever been tested in a randomized trial, and its results were encouraging. Over two years, the program managed to halve the amount of fallen forest near the villages that participated in the scheme, compared to those that didn’t." (Image: James Akena)
Turning Baker’s Yeast Into a Disease Sensor
"For millennia, the baker’s yeast—a humble fungus—has helped humans to bake bread and brew alcoholic drinks. In recent decades, it has also become a darling of laboratory science—it is easy to grow, study, and genetically manipulate, and it provides scientists with important clues about how our own cells work. Now, thanks to Nili Ostrov and colleagues at Columbia University, baker’s yeast is about to begin yet another career—as a biosensor for detecting cholera and other diseases." (Image: Ismail Taxta)
More good reads: science and technology
- “Marion Tinsley—math professor, minister, and the best checkers player in the world—sat across a game board from a computer, dying.” An amazing piece on AI, checkers, and humanity, by Alexis Madrigal
- “Your car has just been crushed by hagfish: an FAQ.” By Andrew Thaler.
- We know next to nothing about sharks, and Shark Week is making that worse. By Erik Vance
- You can now explore the International Space Station on Google Street View. Marina Koren reports
- The Trump Administration wants to loosen bear-hunting rules in Alaskan parks
- Half of all plastic that has ever existed was made in the past 13 years, writes Sarah Zhang
- A 9-year-old tripped, fell and discovered a million-year-old fossil
- "It was one of the key “oh shit” moments in the history of climate science."
- In a few hundred years these tube worms will be alive and we will all be dead
- And finally, please enjoy this owl.
More good reads: politics and society
- "Another day, another white man urging Democrats to re-make the party in his image." By Sarah Lerner
- Dylan Scott explains the morass of healthcare bills that Congress will or will not be voting on, maybe.
- “What we could really use, my guys, is some loud, unequivocal backup.” Lindy West on what real men are actually like.
- The big threat: Trump’s team is working towards a large-scale vote suppression effort
- In which the White House doxxed a bunch of people who complained about its privacy policies, publicly posting their emails and phone numbers.
- Adhocracy: a great word to describe the Trump administration’s approach .
- “I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration.” By Joel Clement.
- A love letter to a toaster with an “A Bit More” button
- Alex Riley writes about how to manage mental illness as a science writer
And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to The Ed's Up: