- Science
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
I’ve Got Your Missing Links Right Here (28 June 2014)
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Top picks
Beautiful piece by Jon Mooallem on the unflinching reality of an eagle-cam and the nature of our relationship with animals.
How do you inventory the zoo in your mouth? Wonderful post by Carl Zimmer.
“Life arose from minerals; then minerals arose from life.” An amazing Aeon essay by Robert Hazen, on the intertwining of geology and biology.
Vitamins are worthless. Or they save lives. Melinda-Wenner Moyer looks into the controversy behind the health claims, and the backlash against them.
Dr No: Seven things you shouldn’t let your doctor do, by Claire Wilson.
A truly beautiful poem about living with autism.
One doctor’s quest to save people with cancer by injecting them with scorpion venom. Great story by Brendan Koerner.
After a walk in the woods, Virginia Hughes muses about how the brain codes subjective and objective experiences
Astronomers find 11 billion year old diamond the size of Earth. By Nadia Drake.
Rose Eveleth’s lovely ode to a town she has never been to but that shares her name.
Science/news/writing
Tracing the Roots of Beautiful Bird Hues
Blind mice see now they run
Interesting pieces on ethics of huge Facebook experiment on emotional contagion
No, there’s still not a ‘breast cancer blood test’. Again.
The shocking truth about electric animals
Oldest animal-built reef found in Namibia. 550 million years old!
Stalking squirrels for science
Meet the Etendeka round-eared sengi, a new elephant shrew
Amazingly rare Amazonian jungle dog is captured on film. You’re more likely to see a jaguar.
What do parasitoids do when their aphid hosts are defended by bacteria? Something awesome.
Love in the Lab – 4 academic couples who have taken their scientific collaborations very personally
How often do people actually think about sex and how would you even measure that?
Monarch butterflies use the Earth’s magneitc field to navigate on cloudy days.
A bizarre blood-sucking Jurassic maggot
The 5 ingredients needed for life beyond Earth
Psychology is weird, child psychology is much weirder.
Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the deadliest ever and “out of control”
How the disco clam got its flash
Terrible retracted GM paper finds a new home.
Mystery object in lake on Saturn’s moon Titan intrigues scientists
CDC reassigns director of lab behind anthrax blunder
Woman who invented Kevlar dies. Vest in peace, Stephanie Kwolek.
Cuckoos are mean. But the birds they target are fighting back with pattern recognition
Anthrax incident has rattled critics of influenza gain-of-function studies
MIT invents a hyper-localized blast of heat that follows a person around like a spotlight
Heh/wow/huh
Bioluminescent caves and other earthly places that look like alien worlds
DROPBEARS! Bear falls through skylight into birthday party, eats all the cupcakes
Scientist thrown out of classical concert by fellow audience members after attempting to crowd-surf
Journalism/society/internet
The bizarre history of Stan Bush’s The Touch.
Reporter asks artists from different countries to photoshop her into “beautiful”
“The rent-a-drone system, as you’d expect, isn’t quite as simple as book check-outs are.”
Strategies for editing your work.
What makes a great editor?
