Uncategorized
- Genetics
Contest brings out the biohackers
Mix one part enthusiasm, two parts engineering and three parts biology — and you’ve got a recipe for do-it-yourself genetic engineering. Every November, college kids from Michigan to Munich descend on MIT, eager to show off their biohacking skills. In the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, teams battle one another to build the coolest synthetically altered organisms. If you want to create a microbe that will sniff out and destroy contaminants in mining waste ponds, or a cell that will produce drugs right in your body, iGEM is for you.
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Letters
Early puberty’s cause Regarding “Early Arrival” (SN: 12/1/12, p. 26): In 1960 I left the Ohio Valley of grass- and corn-fed cows to teach in the Los Angeles area. When I arrived, I found that eighth- and ninth-grade girls looked physically like 25-year-old women in Ohio. I asked the other teachers what was going on. […]
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The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery by Andrew Robinson, ed.
Short biographies of scientists through the ages, from Copernicus to Watson and Crick, illustrate where new ideas and discoveries come from. Thames & Hudson, 2012, 304 p., $45
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Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Wesch, eds.
Online worlds are redefining what it means to be human, according to the authors of these anthropological essays on digital culture. Univ. Press of Colorado, 2012, 243 p., $75
- Space
The Real Story of Risk: Adventures in a Hazardous World by Glenn Croston
A biologist explores why humans are poor at judging risk — fearing rare shark attacks, for example, more than common heart attacks. Prometheus, 2012, 276 p., $19
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Darwin: Portrait of a Genius by Paul Johnson
A historian celebrates Charles Darwin’s triumphs and analyzes his weaknesses in the latest biography of the naturalist. Viking, 2012, 164 p., $25.95
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The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind by Seth S. Horowitz
This review of the science of hearing considers how people have learned to create and control music, sonic weapons and other noises. Bloomsbury, 2012, 305 p., $25
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- Earth
West Antarctica warming fast
A reconstructed temperature record from a high-altitude station shows an unexpectedly rapid rise since 1958.
