I’ve Got Your Missing Links Right Here (26 September 2015)

ByEd Yong
September 26, 2015
5 min read

Sign up for The Ed’s Up—a weekly newsletter of my writing plus some of the best stuff from around the Internet.

Top picks

From me in the Atlantic:

Home aquarium coral poisons 10.5 humans, 3 pets by “exud[ing] some sort of creeping death mist.” Crazy story by Jennifer Frazer

Turing Pharmaceuticals raises the price of a toxoplasmosis drug by 50 times. Derek Lowe covers the fallout.

“Unfortunately, Megan Fox does not make epistemology easy for us.” The Onion has created a celebrity news site, and it’s excellent.

This is a superb piece about people who earn a living by being guinea pigs in clinical trials. By Cari Romm

Ryan Bradley charmingly meets the charming giant kangaroo rat, in a “harsh land growing harsher”.

A universal huh. A new study shows that people everywhere navigate potential misunderstandings in roughly the same three ways. By Olga Khazan

A reexamination of old data for Paxil found that the antidepressant is more dangerous than the authors let on. How much harm has been done in the 14 years since it was published? David Dobbs discusses

The Fukushima disaster’s radiation killed no one. The disaster’s real cost is in mental health. By George Johnson

How a 1930s dentist’s trip around the world spawned today’s Paleo fad—and some dangerous ideas about health. By Emily Matchar

“One of the world’s most important seed banks has left Syria, and it won’t be returning.” Beautiful Ross Andersen on the loss of history

In 1915, a guy bought his wife Stonehenge. “It’s said that Mary wanted Cecil to buy a set of curtains…”

Stampedes will always be a challenge. Part of the problem is fluid dynamics—except people are the fluid.” By Adam Rogers

Really good visualisation of natural/man-made contributors to global warming

 

Science/news/writing

New CRISPR system should be called CRISPEST but won’t be because there is no justice in the world. And another report from the excellent Sharon Begley, about what this means for the ongoing patent dispute

The Brain Scoop meets a millipede.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross investigates the BMJ’s investigation on US dietary guidelines and finds sloppiness & undisclosed conflict of interest

“If Tinder for penguins existed, birds with the best beak spots would get swiped right”

Researchers who found that oxytocin boosts trust fail to replicate their own results. Good on them for publishing

Many endangered species flourish under the umbrella of giant panda conservation

Would you buy a lamp made out of tiny glowing ocean creatures?

If scientists could actually make an invisibility cloak, what would it look like?

“Clinical trial finds no benefit in speculative prescriptions of treatments personalised to individual tumours”

UK scientists apply for licence to edit genes in human embryos

Two labs repel each other over magnetic protein discovery

Disappointed to learn that the International Cave Bear Symposium is a gathering of palaeontologists, not cave bears

Taste mutation helps monkeys enjoy human food

Your Microbe Aura Could Be as Distinctive as Your Fingerprint

Giraffes spend their evenings humming to each other

The self-made castaway who spent 16 years on an atoll with his cats

DNA from Neandertal relative may shake up human family tree

The Arctic Mosquito Swarms Large Enough to Kill a Baby Caribou

Your ears emit sounds

Neuroskeptic covers a paper that challenges the reconsolidation theory of memory

“No luminous complexion is worth the wholesale pollution of Earth’s oceans.”

Computers are taking on more and more medical work. Here’s an example in diabetes

Octopus makes quicksand to disappear

On the critical issue of data privacy and security as it applies to science, by Erika Check Hayden

How to Make Global Warming Look Like a Movie.

Tree of life‘ for 2.3 million species released

Moonquakes! Marsquakes!

Cori Bargmann gets profiled by the NYT on her work studying worms to understand brains

Lady snake gives birth after being alone for eight years, doesn’t need men

A brief history of toilet-based animal attacks

Announcing the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize winners

Termites Infested this Photographer’s Jungle Camera

A lot of you asked, “What happens when you get your period in space?” Here’s the answer

Here’s the first of hopefully many appearances from me on Science Friday.

The wonderful Gaia Vince won the Royal Society book prize for her book on the Anthropocene.

“I survived the deadliest day in Everest’s history, and I’m still surviving it”

“I used to be bothered by having spider bits all over my hand, but I very quickly got used to that”

Carl Zimmer invites you to try the stinky cheese course on evolution’s tasting menu

 

Heh/wow/huh

That time when NASA did a science on pratfalling astronauts

Best New Yorker caption of our time.

“Everyone is born naked, in tears, in blood.” Start as you mean to carry on.

 

LIMITED TIME OFFER

Get a FREE tote featuring 1 of 7 ICONIC PLACES OF THE WORLD

Go Further