The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

Do you speak English?

By: Sally Adee | February 19, 2015

“The problem with France is that there’s no French word for entrepreneur.”

It’s tragic that George W. Bush didn’t actually say this, because it perfectly illuminates the stealth with which languages insinuate themselves into each other. If you speak English, you probably know that when you say sans and en vogue you’re using import words. But you might also think you’re speaking English when you refer to a blonde or a brunette.

Recently there’s been a lot of interest in untranslatable loaner words. These get passed around the internet as linguistic amuse bouches. But it might not be long before you’re throwing iktsuarpok around in your daily bants. The permeability of the English language is part of what has ensured its higgledy-piggledy rise to global dominance. This feat of linguistic and cultural assimilation becomes even more impressive when you consider that it couldn’t be repeated even when exactingly planned — and when you consider how strenuously other cultures have resisted the same fate. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Isis, a Dog Out of Time

By: Judith Lewis Mernit | February 18, 2015

WARNING: If you are not up-to-date on the most recently aired episode of Downton Abbey on PBS, and you actually care what happens, read no more. Spoiler, though hardly a shock, within.

“I’m worried about Isis,” Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham told his daughter Mary the other night. “She’s not looking too clever.” ‘Tis true: Isis, the yellow Labrador Retriever whose ample rear end has long graced the opening credits of the show, is about to die. It’s nothing to do with the recent and awkward association of her name with Islamic terrorism, though: Isis has lived at least eight years since she appeared as an adult dog in Season Two. She has lived through the Great War, the Spanish flu, and Matthew Crawley’s histrionic car crash; she has lasted longer than some of the series’ devoted viewers. Isis has simply grown old.

Not that we aren’t sad to see her go. When Lord Grantham carried Isis into the bedroom wrapped in a blanket and settled her down on the bed next to his wife—the dog’s impending death mending the rift that had yawned between the couple for the last few episodes—I actually cried. But not much, really, and not for long. Because not only has Isis done quite well by the standard of yellow Labrador movie stars, expiring with less cloying indignity than Marley and less violence than rabid Old Yeller (actually a yellow Lab/Mastiff cross), Isis is also a perversely modern dog, and one that I never considered quite real.

Continue reading →

Redux: The Scientist in the Garden

By: Cameron Walker | February 17, 2015

This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared in January 2012.

I can’t remember why the seed catalogs started showing up, but once they did, I was a goner. If you haven’t ever gotten one, imagine full color photo spreads of produce, like the striped Tigger Melon and and the orange-red lusciousness of the French pumpkin Rouge Vif d’Etampes. I suppose the names don’t have quite the ring of “Miss September,” but compared to some centerfold beauty, these fruits and vegetables are much more alluring — maybe because some September, a new variety might appear in my own garden, one that I could give any name I wanted.

This is how I ended up with at least six different varieties of tomato seeds last year. I’m not quite sure what it is about tomatoes. Even before I had a real garden, I’d buy the plants every year. They always seemed so hopeful, appearing in the nursery in winter, when you can’t even imagine that by fall you’ll be saying ridiculous things like, “Caprese salad, again? I don’t think I can do it.”

Somewhere along the lines, I realized there were more options out there then the plants we could find at our local nursery. I knew I had to grow from seed once I learned that there was a variety named after the writer Michael Pollan. I could even figure out how to crossbreed my own tomatoes (and wondered what I’d call a Black & Brown Boar crossed with a Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye–oh, the possibilities!).

So there I found myself, one morning last winter, in front of a tray of dirt with seeds and Sharpies and labels in hand. Continue reading →

Is 12 Degrees Warm or Cold?

By: Helen Fields | February 16, 2015

The other morning when I left for work, it was 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

How you feel about that statement probably depends on where you live. Well, first, if you live outside the U.S., you might be wondering what that means, so I’ll tell you: it’s -11 Celsius. You’re impressed now, right?

If, like my relatives in Michigan, you are under several feet of snow, you might think, “pshaw, 12 is tropical.” (It was -5 F/-21 C in their town the last time I checked, Sunday at 11 pm.)

But if you live somewhere warmer, you might think something between “brrr” and “holy cow, people can live in that?” Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Jessa Gamble | February 14, 2015

February 9 – 13, 2015

Christie shares select experiences on social media and enjoys vicariously experiencing others’ exhilarating moments, but web video will never replace good-old immersive, unmediated life.

Parents considering whether to immunize their children face the Prisoner’s Dilemma, says Erik, and decision theory can help explain the appalling presence of measles in a nation that enjoys modern medicine.

Cassie tours a biosafety level 3 laboratory and explores the risks and benefits of engineering (for study) extra-virulent strains of the diseases that threaten us.

Does the Earth belong to us – to be used wisely and protected as a resource – or should that protection acknowledge that our species is a destructive parasite? Michelle finds support for both views in the annals of conservation science.

A mysterious disappearance in Northern Canada has locals prowling the woods for signs of a pink hat.

Lost in the Woods

By: Jessa Gamble | February 13, 2015

Somewhere within walking distance of me, there is a dead human body, unburied, in the woods, and it will likely never be found.

Psychiatrist Atsumi Yoshikubo arrived in Yellowknife from Uto, Japan last October 17, one of hundreds of tourists who come to see the Northern Lights every year. She checked into our nicest hotel for one week and inquired about aurora borealis tours, only to be told that the tourist season was over for the year.

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Aldo Explains it All

By: Michelle Nijhuis | February 12, 2015

You may have heard that conservation biologists are arguing with each other. Some say nature should be protected for humans; others say it should be protected from humans; others say it’s possible to do both. This may sound like an academic debate—and in many ways it is—but it has become a very nasty one, and over the past couple of years it has severely taxed an important field that has far too few resources to begin with.

I’ve written about the argument’s gory details elsewhere, but here I’d like to take a longer view. For this fight was, in its broadest sense, settled more than a half-century ago, and the referee is still relevant. His name was Aldo Leopold. Continue reading →

Behind the Steel Door

By: Cassandra Willyard | February 11, 2015

In 2011, Yoshihiro Kawaoka reported that his team had engineered a pandemic form of the bird flu virus. Bird flu, also known as H5N1, has infected infected nearly 700 people worldwide and killed more than 400. But it hasn’t yet gained the ability to jump easily from human to human. Kawaoka’s research suggested that capability might be closer than anyone had imagined. His team showed that their virus could successfully hop from ferret to ferret via airborne droplets. In addition to scaring the bejesus out of many, Kawaoka’s controversial study, and a similar study by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands, also sparked a debate about the wisdom of engineering novel and potentially deadly pathogens in the lab.

It’s easy to see why people would be skeptical of research that aims to make pathogens that are deadlier or more transmissible than those found in nature. Marc Lipsitch and Alison Galvani outline many of the criticisms in an editorial published last year. Such experiments “impose a risk of accidental and deliberate release that, if it led to extensive spread of the new agent, could cost many lives. While such a release is unlikely in a specific laboratory conducting research under strict biosafety procedures, even a low likelihood should be taken seriously, given the scale of destruction if such an unlikely event were to occur. Furthermore, the likelihood of risk is multiplied as the number of laboratories conducting such research increases around the globe.”

But Kawaoka makes a decent counterargument. “H5N1 viruses circulating in nature already pose a threat, because influenza viruses mutate constantly and can cause pandemics with great losses of life. Within the past century, ‘Spanish’ influenza, which stemmed from a virus of avian origin, killed between 20 million and 50 million people. Because H5N1 mutations that confer transmissibility in mammals may emerge in nature, I believe that it would be irresponsible not to study the underlying mechanisms,” he wrote in a 2012 editorial. Continue reading →