The Ed's Up #55

Deinocheirus Exposed: Meet The Body Behind the Terrible Hand

For 50 years, the dinosaur was just a pair of arms. Now, two specimens reveal the full body of Deinocheirus: a T.rex-sized, horse-faced, duck-billed, toothless, hump-backed, huge-clawed, fan-tailed, Jar Jar Binks-lookalike. It was... rather weird. (Image: Yuong-Nam Lee)



 

How An Antibiotic Gene Jumped All Over The Tree of Life

A antibacterial gene has jumped into every major branch of life: animals, plants, fungi, archaea, other bacteira, and even some viruses. This makes sense: bacteria are ancient and everywhere. Every living thing has to contend with them. By imparting a universally useful trait, this gene proved to be a welcome immigrant into every kingdom. (Image: Shipher Wu)




 

Talk at Cork

I'll be giving a talk at University College Cork next Thursday (30th October) about science writing, social media, and journalism. It's at 5pm, in Lecture Theatre G05 in the Western Gateway Building on Western Road. All welcome.

More good reads

• Last wk, Eric Betzig won a Nobel. This wk, he publishes another revolutionary Science paper. Next week, a nap? (Seriously, the videos here are amazing).
• A fascinating story about people with extremely rare (and extremely useful) blood types. By Penny Bailey
• Life Story is the best BBC wildlife documentary for a long time, which is saying something. Catch it on BBC iPlayer if you missed it. And steel yourself before watching this clip of baby geese.
• This excellent critique of "The Hot Zone" by Ebola researcher Tara Smith explains why Richard Preston’s credibility has liquefied and bled out of every orifice.
• 'Small, cute, fuzzy animals' likely to be part of 'invisible extinction'. Fascinating comment piece on the things that we lose and may never remember.
• Three artificial sweeteners were discovered when chemists failed to wash their hands.
• "Will we ever know if this widely-used contraceptive increases the risk of HIV infection?" Captivating piece about medical ethics, by Arielle Duhaime-Ross.  
• A wonderfully touching story about an autistic boy's friendship with Siri. By Judith Newman.
• This incredibly important long-term study on guillemots is going to shutter, for the want of £12,000. By Tim Birkhead.
• "2 thoughts came to me: I can't believe what I'm seeing right now; I wish Darwin could have seen this." Jennifer Frazer on an amazing underwater light show.

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

You can also follow me on Twitter, find regular writing on my blog. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.

And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed