The Ed's Up #206
New Zealand’s War on Rats Could Change the World
"In recent years, many of the country’s conservationists and residents have rallied behind Predator-Free 2050, an extraordinarily ambitious plan to save the country’s birds by eradicating its invasive predators. Native birds of prey will be unharmed, but Predator-Free 2050’s research strategy, which is released today, spells doom for rats, possums, and stoats (a large weasel). They are to die, every last one of them. No country, anywhere in the world, has managed such a task in an area that big. By coincidence, the rise of the Predator-Free 2050 conceit took place alongside the birth of a tool that could help make it a reality—CRISPR, the revolutionary technique that allows scientists to edit genes with precision and ease. In its raw power, some conservationists see a way of achieving impossible-sounding feats like exterminating an island’s rats by spreading genes through the wild population that make it difficult for the animals to reproduce. Think Children of Men, but for rats. Other scientists, including at least one gene-editing pioneer, see the potential for ecological catastrophe, beginning in an island nation with good intentions but eventually enveloping the globe." (Image: Stas Kulesh)
How the Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds
"When the fungus first enters its host, it exists as single cells that float around the ant’s bloodstream, budding off new copies of themselves. But at some point, as Fredericksen’s images show, these single cells start working together. They connect to each other by building short tubes, of a kind that have only ever been seen before in fungi that infects plants. Hooked up in this way, they can communicate and exchange nutrients. Whenever Hughes or anyone else discusses the zombie-ant fungus, they always talk about it as a single entity, which corrupts and subverts a host. But you could also think of the fungus as a colony, much like the ants it targets. Individual microscopic cells begin life alone but eventually come to cooperate, fusing into a superorganism. Together, these brainless cells can commandeer the brain of a much larger creature." (Image: Katja Schulz) 
What DNA Says About the Extinction of America’s Most Common Bird
"Passenger pigeons were once the most abundant bird in North America, and quite possibly the world. And then, people started shooting them. They poisoned them, netted them, gassed them, hit them with sticks. In a matter of decades, the continent’s most common bird has been completely wiped out, down to the last individual. “It’s always astounded me how something could have that large a population and entirely disappear,” says Beth Shapiro from the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Why didn’t tiny populations survive somewhere refugia? I mean, we are pretty good at murdering things, but how did we kill every one of them?”
Gutless Lords of a Sunless World
Here's the third video from the series that's based on my book. This one's about an extraordinary way of life at the bottom of the ocean. Friends of The Ed’s Up
This is a new section where I'm going to promote the work of people I care about--people who make incredible art that I think is worthy of your attention and support, but whose fierce intelligence is also match by a genuine warmth of spirit.
Story Collider features true personal stories about science. The latest episode of the podcastfeatures tales of lactose intolerance, neurological mysteries, and above all else--family. Directors Liz Neeley and Erin Barker also run workshops teaching storytelling skills to scientists.
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More good reads
- This is a “brief history of looking at half the population and assuming the worst”, by Megan Garber, who has been one of the best and most consistent voices on the problem of sexual harassment. Here’s another from her about the “brotesters” who passed themselves off as allies while being scumbags themselves. Rebecca Traister writes that we are all complicit in what has happened, and are due for a collecting reckoning. Vann Newkirk II writes about the continuing Roy Moore scandal. And Caitlin Flanagan makes the case in a two-part piece that Democrats have their own reckoning to face about Bill Clinton and their role in letting him off the hook.
- Bombshell scoop from Julia Ioffe showing that Wikileaks asked Donald Trump Jr. to spread its work, contest the election results, and have Assange appointed ambassador to the U.S.
- The Republican tax bill will bankrupt grad students and destroy the foundation of American science.
- The myth of the male bumbler “takes one of our culture's most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponizes it into an alibi,” writes Lili Loofbourow. Essential piece for our times.
- Really wonde… great piece of profile-writing by Caity Weaver, about Gal Gadot.
- Chilling and disturbing piece about the origin of one of America’s most infamous Nazi trolls.
- Democrats are the party of climate change. But they don’t have a plan for fighting it, says Robinson Meyer.
- An astonishing video shows CRISPR editing DNA in real time
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And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed