The Ed's Up #43

Lizard “Sees” With Its Skin For Automatic Camouflage

The Moorish gecko can change colour to match its surroundings even when it's blindfolded. How? It has light-sensitive proteins in its skin that seem to give it a "distributed sight", automatically camouflage it without involving its eyes. (Image: Danny S)



A quiet week from me--I've finally started writing my book. 1,000 words down, and 79,000 to go. In the meantime, here is a particularly rich selection of...

More good reads

• “As one obscure genetic condition after another was ruled out, the Mights began to wonder whether they would ever learn the cause of their son’s agony. What if Bertrand was suffering from a disorder that was not just extremely rare but entirely unknown to science?” This piece by Seth Mnookin is one of the best of the year.
• Do you have kids? Do you want to do some fun experiments with them at home? Actual experiments that will teach them what science is like, rather than lame baking soda volcanoes? Alom Shaha has you covered with this wonderful new site.
• It’s been a terrible week for biosafety in the US. After smallpox vials were found in the back of some random freezer last week (!!!) Maryn McKenna speaks to the leader of the smallpox eradication effort, which ended 34y ago. The CDC released details of three blunders that potentially exposed staff to anthrax and unintentionally shipped H5N1 influenza virus. Helen Branswell considers if the next error could lead to a pandemic. The CDC director promised "sweeping change in our lab culture” lest there be sweeping death from lab cultures. Shortly after, the six smallpox vials turned out to be part of a poorly labelled disease pick-n-mix. Perfect time, then, to dismiss all the inaugural members of a long-serving biosafety board...
• Bariatric surgery seems to work, but why? Virginia Hughes investigates, and segues into the fascinating guts of the Burmese python.
• This is an important paper on the unacceptable scale of sexual harrassment in science fieldwork, by Kate Clancy, Robin Nelson, Julienne Rutherford and Katie Hinde. Of the respondents, 64% experienced sexual harassment and 20% experienced assault, women disproportionately so.
• “It featured web-like diagrams of lines connecting nodes, a hallmark of research that analyzes networks. But each node, rather than being a plain dot, was the head of a burly, red-bearded Viking sporting a horned hat.” Mapping the social networks of Viking mythology. Fascinating piece by Veronique Greenwood
• “Its weirdly powerful cells storm the uterus like an invading army and commandeer a woman’s body for nine months to keep her fetus alive.” Amazing piece on the placenta, by Denise Grady.
• 114 years after blood types were discovered, we still don't really know what they're for. By Carl Zimmer.
• Proving how old the world's oldest people are is really hard. By Rachel Nuwer.
• AV Flox explains why Science’s cover featuring headless transsexual women is deeply problematic. And Andrew Thaler analyses the same in the context of three other connected events on gender and science.

 

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.