The Ed's Up #39
Association of British Science Writers Awards
I won an award for Best Science Blog--a new category introduced this year. The prize was jointly awarded to Not Exactly Rocket Science and the Cancer Research UK Science Update blog (which I'm a co-founder of and which is now ably run by my former colleagues Henry Scowcroft and Kat Arney). It's an honour to be recognised along some good friends doing great work, and people like Ian Sample and Jessa Gamble. Here's the full list of winners.
Social Spiders Pick The Best Careers For Their Personalities
"While most spiders hunt alone, there are a few hundred species of social spiders that live in colonies. A.studiosus is one of them. Up to 50 individuals gather together to spin large collective webs, which ensnare larger prey than each spider could trap on its own. They’re a little like ants and termites, where small workers clean and forage, and big soldiers guard and defend. But unlike these social insects, the social spiders don’t have distinctive castes with different physiques. Instead, their roles are defined by their personalities." (Image: Joe Lapp)
More good reads
- Amazing story; beautifully written. Calling Back a Zombie Ship From the Graveyard of Space. By Kenneth Chang.
- How does a chicken tell time. By Ferris Jabr.
- The passenger pigeon genome the complicated reasons behind the downfall of the most populous bird in North America. By Carl Zimmer.
- Italian psychologist who wrote "manual on persuasion" is now peddling dangerous stem cell treatments. By Arielle Duhaime-Ross
- A tree hitched 18,000km from Hawaii to an island near Madagascar. Great story from Emma Marris.
- Which scientists make heaviest use of PNAS' "Contributed" backdoor route? Peter Aldhous investigates
- Where do new ideas come from? From old ones. By Virginia Hughes
- Annalee Newitz on 10 scientific ideas that scientists wish you would stop misusing
More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.