Blogs / The Loom

Bonobos, along with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. Unfortunately the entire species has dwindled down to a few thousand survivors, all in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This morning I got a worrying email from Vanessa Woods, a bonobo expert who’s at a bonobo research facility in DRC:

In the last month, a flu epidemic has hit the bonobo sanctuary where we work: Lola ya bonobo (www.friendsofbonobos.org). It is the only bonobo sanctuary in the world, with over 60 orphans from the bushmeat trade.

The virus has infected over 20 bonobos and counting, and has already killed four. Another 3 have died, we aren’t sure of the cause, so it could be as many as seven, which means the sanctuary has already lost over a tenth of its population.

The symptoms are a dry cough, followed by a runny nose. But then the bonobos start hyperventilating, it’s like they can’t get enough air. They die as quickly as 72 hours after the initial symptoms. The problem is, the virus hasn’t seem to run its course, it’s been through the nursery twice, and is bouncing back and forth between the enclosures.

The only enclosure that is safe is the quarantined bonobos who will be released back into the wild in June this year.

Bonobos, known as the peaceful ape, are also the most endangered, with as few as 10,000 left in the wild. They share 98.7% of our DNA, like chimps, but unlike chimps who have murder, rape, and war in their societies, bonobos communities are female dominated and have very little violence. Their similarity to humans is why the virus could jump so quickly.

Lola ya Bonobo is critical to the conservation of bonobos, both through education (30,000 Congolese visit the sanctuary every year, most of them school children) and the release project which will be the first time bonobos have been released into the wild.

The economic crisis has also hit Congo, and the sanctuary is down $33,000 for food this year. No food = no medicine, and the drugs and equipment to treat this kind of epidemic are expensive.

If anyone has heard of anything like this illness in great apes, please write to v.woods@duke.edu. If people would like to donate, please visit www.friendsofbonobos.org/support.htm .

 [Image from Friends of Bonobos]

GrrlScientist is seeking submissions to Scientia, a new carnival for science, nature and medical blog writing. You can submit your entries here. The first edition is going to published Monday, April 6, so submit now!

Last summer I had a great time revisiting my geek childhood by watching old episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on Itunes. As I blogged here, it may be as badly dated as a disco ball, but it’s still wonderfully captivating to my twenty-first century daughters.

Well, if you didn’t fork over $1.99 per episode then, here’s a new recession-era deal you can’t refuse. Cosmos is now on Hulu. Here’s episode one…

Chris Mooney (the subject of a Loom post over the weekend) and Sheril Kirshenbaum have brought their blog, The Intersection, to Discover. I think I’ve been reading the Intersection ever since it started, years ago. Mooney and Kirshenbaum focus on the intersection (hence the name) of science and culture in all its manifestations, from scientific literacy to the way science gets treated by the government. Even when I’ve disagreed with them, I’ve found them thought-provoking. So be sure to check them out.

Over the past two summers I’ve paid visits to the lovely Isles of Shoals to speak to students and scientists at the Shoals Marine Lab. (I wrote a post about my 2007 trip here, and last summer’s journey here.) This year I’ll be trying something new: I’m teaching a week-long college-credit course on science writing. It will run from August 10 to 17, and, like all classes at Shoals, it will be intense. We’ll read a lot, write a lot more, and take advantage of the unique environment of Appledore Island, where you should never be surprised to encounter an underwater archaeologist, an ornithologist banding migratory birds, or a vet dissecting a seal on a picnic table.

The Lab will be taking registrations for the next few weeks. By the way, here’s the whole course list for the summer, including a class on the history of oceans that will start at Cornell and move through time and space to Appledore.

Image: Rick Holt, Wikipedia

When I recently gave a talk at Rockefeller University, I met a remarkable grad student named Alexis Gambis, who has organized the Imagine Science Film Festival. Last year was its launch, and this year they’re at it again. Alexis asked me to be on the jury, and while I warned him that I think bad science makes for good science fiction, I signed on. They’re now eager for submissions–visit their web site for more details. I’ll be waiting to watch.

The book costs $8,539. The reviews on Amazon are priceless.

(Hat tip, Dr. Prerogative of Harlots)

Last week I blegged for examples of great science writing from over the years, and you did not disappoint. Rania Masri, who teaches writing to scientists in Lebanon, asked if I could share the list. It’s the least I can do in exchange for everyone’s generosity, and this morning I’ve got some time as I listen to some interviews for good quotes. (I also have to say it’s very cool to be helping somebody out in Lebanon from my laptop.)

I’ve selected the readings that I think would work best for a class on the art of writing about science and nature. This is obvious a far from definitive list. For one thing, it underrepresents the great books about science. For another, it’s heavy on biology and light on physics, etc.–a reflection of the self-selected nature of the Loom’s readers, I suspect. And I’ve preferred pieces that can be read online. Imperfections notwithstanding, I hope this list brings people some unexpected pleasures from the past…

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I’m putting together a list of classic articles and essays about science for a writing class I’m designing, and I’m a bit frustrated. I’ve read plenty of great stuff over the years, but the list I’m coming up with feels too short. So allow me to launch a comment thread: can you name an article or essay about science that you read years ago in a magazine or newspaper that still sticks with you? (No books allowed.)

Update: Just to be clear, I’m not looking for scientific papers.

Check out this scholarship for high school science teachers to learn tropical biology in Costa Rican jungles. Apply here. Get sweaty. Have a good time.

For my third post celebrating the Year of Science, I wanted to write about the secrets of nature that sit right in front of us, in plain view. By coincidence, I happened to be looking at the newest issue of Science and came across a paper about microscopic casks that float by the thousands in our cells, known as vaults. I looked for them in a cell biology textbook. Not there. So I wandered the Tubes and found some papers on line as well an excellent web site about vaults at UCLA. I discovered that scientists haven’t yet figured out what they do.

There are, of course, lots of things about our cells that scientists have yet to figure out. But the blatant obviousness of vaults makes them a stark example of how hard answers are to come by in science. Check out my post.

Update: Thanks to Science European news editor John Travis for pointing me to an article he wrote on the mystery of vaults in 1996. Thirteen years later, he’s still waiting for the mystery to be solved. A question: are vaults mysterious because they’re hard to understand, or because they’re not considered sexy enough for people to get funded to do the necessary research?

[Image source: Kato et al, "A vault ribonucleoprotein particle exhibiting 39-fold dihedral symmetry," Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2008 May 1; 64(Pt 5): 525–531]

At a recent meeting of biologists, a friend handed me a piece of paper that had been folded into eighths, with hand-drawn pictures and writing about biology. Why…it’s a zine, I thought. It came from the Small Science Collective, which has put together lots of foldable booklets about science that they encourage you to download for free and leave on your bus, at your favorite coffee shop, or anywhere else you might want to spread knowledge about bot flies (and about lots of other science almost as cool as bot flies). And if you want to join the collective, they want to hear from you.