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The Ed's Up #83
April 29, 2015
Chinese Dinosaur Had Bat-Like Wings and Feathers "In full, it is Yi qi, which comes from the Mandarin for “strange wing” and can be roughly butchered as “ee...
The Ed's Up #82
April 23, 2015
Consider the Sponge "Even some professional biologists disregard sponges as lowly, primitive proto-animals, sitting at the bottom of an evolutionary ladder...
The Ed's Up #81
April 15, 2015
Oxytocin Makes New Mouse Mothers Focus on Cries of Lost Pups This week: a two-parter of cool science about a much-hyped molecule. "Bianca Marlin from New...
The Ed's Up #80
April 9, 2015
Selfish Shellfish Cells Cause Contagious Clam Cancer "This cancer—this clam leukaemia—seemed to be transmissible. If you took the blood of infected clams and...
The Ed's Up #79
April 2, 2015
Shrub Attracts Pollinators By Glittering Under the Full Moon "On the cliffs of the Mediterranean, there grows an untidy, scrambling shrub called Ephedra...
The Ed's Up #78
March 25, 2015
One year in... Almost exactly a year ago, I got a deal to write my first book, an exploration of the incredible partnerships between animals and microbes....
The Ed's Up #77
March 19, 2015
Fish that Walks on Land Swallows With Tongue Made of Water Michel filmed Atlantic mudskippers with high-speed cameras as they sucked up pieces of shrimp that...
The Ed's Up #76
March 12, 2015
Sorry for the missing newsletter last week, folks. I was on a reporting trip in Chicago and all atomic motion in my hands had ceased. Anyway, I'm back and...
The Ed's Up #75
February 26, 2015
Food Additives Inflame Mouse Guts By Disturbing Microbes "These additives may confer stability to food, but they can also bring discord to the gut—at least...
The Ed's Up #74
February 19, 2015
Why Do Luna Moths Have Such Absurdly Long Tails? "Eyespots are visual defences, and bats—the main nemeses of moths—are not visual hunters. They find their...
The Ed's Up #73
February 12, 2015
There’s No Plague on the NYC Subway. No Platypuses Either. Several reports last week claimed that scientists had discovered Yersinia pestis, the bacterium...
The Ed's Up #72
February 5, 2015
On the Origin of Colourful Monkey Faces "The guenons are known for their beautiful and diverse faces. De Brazza’s monkey has a white moustache and beard, and...
The Ed's Up #71
January 29, 2015
How the Scorpion Lost Its Tail (And Its Anus) Here’s the problem. A scorpion’s anus isn’t where you think it probably would be. Instead, it’s at the end of...
The Ed's Up #70
January 22, 2015
Monkey With Better Social Networks Stay Warmer in the Winter "It’s three in the morning in South Africa, in the middle of winter. Temperatures have dropped...
The Ed's Up #68
January 14, 2015
Here's looking at you, squid It was a delight to profile the wonderful Margaret McFall-Ngai for Nature. Through her work on an adorable squid and its glowing...
The Ed's Up #67
January 8, 2015
A New Antibiotic That Resists Resistance "Teixobactin appears resistant to resistance. Bacteria will eventually develop ways of beating it—remember Orgel—but...
The Ed's Up #66
January 2, 2015
Cholera Bacteria Kill Each Other With Spears To Steal DNA The Highlander film series is about a race of immortal warriors who try to behead each other with...
The Ed's Up #65 - End of 2014 edition
December 29, 2014
In a break from journalistic tradition, I thought I’d put up an end-of-year list at the actual end of the year. I know! I promise to live less dangerously in...
The Ed's Up #64
December 25, 2014
Top Science Longreads of 2014 Every year, I pick my favourite science features—or ‘longreads’, as they have been rebranded as—from the previous 12 months....
The Ed's Up #63
December 18, 2014
Questioning a Hero Six years ago, I spent an hour at David Attenborough’s house, talking to him about wildlife, film-making and his career. Three weeks ago,...
The Ed's Up #62
December 11, 2014
The Long War Against the Iron Pirates "Disease is an act of piracy. When microbes infect us, they steal our resources so they can thrive at our expense. We...
The Ed's Up #61
December 4, 2014
Electric Eels Can Remotely Control Their Prey’s Muscles The electric eel can (in)famously create its own electricity. More than four-fifths of its two-metre-...
The Ed's Up #60
November 27, 2014
To Beat Malaria, We Need to See It as an Ecological Problem "Mosquitoes aren’t static, unchanging targets. They move around. They mate. They breed in some...
The Ed's Up #59
November 20, 2014
What Disco Fog Taught Us About Iguana Lungs Froggys Fog Swamp Juice is billed as “the world’s greatest fog”. According to the manufacturers, it produces a...
The Ed's Up #58
November 12, 2014
Contaminomics: Why Some Microbiome Studies May Be Wrong This is arguably one of the most important microbiome studies this year. A team of scientists has...
The Ed's Up #57
November 6, 2014
There Is No ‘Healthy’ Microbiome In this essay, my first for the New York Times, I argue that the quest for a “healthy” microbiome is an illusion, based on a...
The Ed's Up #56
October 30, 2014
A Personalised Mini-Stomach, Grown in a Dish "In a lab at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, a series of small blobs sit in a Petri dish. They’re...
The Ed's Up #55
October 23, 2014
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...
The Ed's Up #54
October 15, 2014
A Flood of Borrowed Genes at the Origins of Tiny Extremists This is a wonderful story about one domain of life driving the evolution of another. The archaea...
The Ed's Up #53
October 9, 2014
Cave-Exploring Snake Robot Gets Inspiration From Sidewinders "Three years ago, a robotic snake called Elizabeth slithered into Egyptian caves to search for...
The Ed's Up #52
October 2, 2014
The Human Genome Is In Stalemate in the War Against Itself "The human genome is engaged in a similar evolutionary arms race… against itself. The opponents...
The Ed's Up #51
September 24, 2014
When Your Prey’s in a Hole and You Don’t Have a Pole, Use a Moray Coral trout recruit moray eels to flush prey from crevices. They also recruit partners only...
The Ed's Up #50
September 3, 2014
With Evolutionary Rocket Fuel, Bacteria Give Peas a Chance Many bacteria have evolved partnerships with plants, by picking up large packages of genes that...
The Ed's Up #49
August 28, 2014
When You Move House, Your Microbial Aura Moves Too As soon as we move into a space, we inject microbes into it, and those bugs colonise the area within 24...
The Ed's Up #48
August 20, 2014
DIY diagnosis: how an extreme athlete uncovered her genetic flaw If you read one thing from this newsletter, I'd recommend this one. It's a story about Kim...
The Ed's Up #47
August 14, 2014
A Swarm of a Thousand Cooperative, Self-Organising Robots "In a lab at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, the world’s largest swarm of cooperative robots is building...
The Ed's Up #46
August 7, 2014
On The Evolution of Migration Migration evolved from stagnation. The ancestors of these birds stayed in the same place all-year round, and gradually, they...
The Ed's Up #45
July 31, 2014
Cancer biomarkers: Written in blood (Longread) "When cancer cells rupture and die, they release their contents, including circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA):...
The Ed's Up #44
July 23, 2014
Why Has This Really Common Virus Only Just Been Discovered? A newly discovered virus called crAssphage lives in the majority of people, and there's lots of...
The Ed's Up #43
July 17, 2014
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...
The Ed's Up #42
July 10, 2014
These Microbes Drive The Planet’s Breath And Ocean’s Pulse"A few years ago, a team of scientists took an expensive robot, attached it to a buoy floating off...
The Ed's Up #41
July 3, 2014
Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans"Tibetan people can survive on the roof of the world—one of the most inhospitable places that anybody...
The Ed's Up #40
June 26, 2014
Sleeping Through the BlitzIt's not just antibiotic-resistant bacteria that we have to worry about. Hit bacteria with antibiotics and they can evolve...
The Ed's Up #39
June 19, 2014
Hi, folks. This week's edition is a bit abridged, because I've been on holiday for the past week and will be on a reporting trip for the next one....
The Ed's Up #38
June 12, 2014
Why Dinosaurs Were Like Tuna, Great Whites, and EchidnasA new study found that dinosaurs were mesotherms: they were lukewarm-blooded. "Mesotherms are...
The Ed's Up #37
June 5, 2014
Hi folks. Thanks to all of you lovely people, I now have more than 2,000 subscribers to this list. Yay! That also means that I went past MailChimp's free...