The Ed's Up #195
Decapitated Worms Get Better, See Again
"For humans, decapitation is fatal. For a planarian flatworm, it’s a mild and temporary inconvenience. These small animals are masters of regeneration. Cut off their heads, and a new one—sometimes two new ones—will regrow within a few days. Bisect them, and both halves will regenerate a full animal. Excise a small lump of tissue, and it too will produce a new worm. Transplant a single adult cell onto a dying planarian and the donor cell will take over, creating skin, nerves, muscle, and eventually an entire body. As one 19th-century naturalist wrote, planarians could “almost be called immortal under the edge of a knife.” (Image: Eduard Sola)
Finally: An App That Can Identify the Animal You Saw on Your Hike
"Loarie and his team have developed an app that can help. Known as iNaturalist, it began as a crowdsourced community, where people can upload photos of animals and plants for other users to identify. But a month ago, the team updated the app so that an artificial intelligence now identifies what you’re looking at. In some cases, it’ll nail a particular species—it correctly pegged the dragonfly I spotted as a slaty skimmer (Libellula incesta). For the butterfly, it was less certain. “We’re pretty sure this is in the genus Papilio,” it offered, before listing ten possible species." (Image: Jason Lee) (AND YES, to clarify, because these things seem to have eluded Twitter, I know that's a panda and that's a flip-phone. Those are deliberate jokes.)
The Worst Birds
"Pity the fur seal pups of Guafo Island. If they can evade being battered by the storms that pound the island, and avoid being trampled by the huge adult males that periodically charge across the beach, and dodge the killer whales that patrol the surrounding waters, then they might just live to get their perineums pecked raw by seagulls." (Image: Dick Daniels)
Humpback Whales Remix Their Old Songs
"The humpbacks were combining themes from both old and new songs, but leaving each individual theme largely untouched. Sometimes, they sang a transitional phrase to bridge the gap between the two segments. Sometimes, they melded one song into another at places that were musically similar, like the world’s largest deejays." (Image: Lucas Jackson)
Book news
I’m honoured to have been a finalist for the National Academies’ Keck Prize for my book I Contain Multitudes, and very happy to have lost to Hidden Figures.
More good reads: science and technology
- Like Game of Thrones, if everyone was a falcon. Wonderful piece by Robinson Meyer
- Is the anti-vaccine movement winning? Julia Belluz investigates
- Huge report on the Trump Administration’s fractious relationship with science, six months in.
- Adrienne LaFrance looks into “the ongoing ethics debate over what professionals can say about the president's mental health”
- Chimp Guy Knocks Baboon Guy's Upbeat View of Human War
- Slug-mucus-inspired adhesive could help repair hearts
- Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests
- A new study on CTE—a degenerative brain condition—and the National Football League doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, says Dan Engber
- A company called Helix, which is selling genetic tests like apps, is courting pseudoscience. By Sarah Zhang
- “There’s a downside to being smart—it makes you risk reading too much into a situation and drawing inappropriate conclusions.” Olga Khazan on the connection between intelligence and bigotry.
- “She hovers in the air, squirting tiny maggots into the host’s nose, using what I can only describe as a weaponized maggot-shooting vaginal gun.”
More good reads: politics and society
- After seven months of omnishambling drama, the latest attempt to repeal Obamacare has failed. And while McCain is getting all the attention, more credit should go to Senators Murkowski and Collins who “repeatedly stood their ground” through the process, and the thousands of activists—most of them women—that made the decision possible. In the aftermath, here’s a look at how the repeal died, how it exposed the rot at the heart of Republican policy, and how it could rise again.
- Trump announced a ban on transgender people in the military. You should read this profile of Kristin Beck, a trans Navy SEAL, and this illustrated essay about being a trans person in the military, by Jess Ruliffson
- In which the President “openly called on police officers to rough up suspects they were bringing into detention”—the “most chilling speech of his Presidency”
- Trump’s lawyers are looking at multiple ways to undermine or curtail the Russia inquiry, including his issuing pardons. But can Trump really pardon anyone? Himself? Can he fire Mueller? A good FAQ
- Trump has publicly mocked his attorney general, sacked his chief of staff, and installed a new comms director who phoned the New Yorker for an angry rant. So... okay.
- Megan Garber reflects on the career of Michiko Kakutani—the NYT’s amazing book critic
- And finally... do you want to send a sensitive news tip to The Atlantic? Here’s where to start.
And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed
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