Veronique greenwood
20 articles-
Welcome to the Unpredictable Era of Editing Human Embryos
Headlines and apocalyptic notions about designer babies proliferated last month after Chinese scientists published the results of a curious set of experiments on human embryos. The researchers were looking to understand whether gene-editing technology could correct, before birth, a malformed gene that can cause a potentially devastating blood disease. They found that the method introduced new […] -
Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking
How Julian Jaynes’ famous 1970s theory is faring in the neuroscience age. -
A Material So Dark That It Looks Like a Black Hole
Even when applied to a highly reflective surface like aluminum foil, Vantablack renders the entire surface, including creases, all but invisible.Surrey Nanosystems via Wikipedia Color is such a powerful and evocative sensation—one of the first that we learn to describe as children—that we don’t often think about what it really is. In a sense, color […] -
Food Vibrations: Spiders Are Total Virtuosos with Their Webs
Spider webs are veritable antennas humming with signals. -
The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games
Patrick Gensel via Flickr Lately I’ve been hearing a kind of spectral music in the background of my daily life. It’s a syncopated, repeating MIDI ditty that conjures a feeling of excitement and invigorating challenge. I recently recognized it, and in the process experienced an intense wave of nostalgia. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. […]
-
How Humans Made Squirrels a Part of the Urban Environment
This engraving of a gray squirrel was included in the December 1841 issue of Robert Merry’s Museum. One day in 1856, hundreds of people gathered to gawk at an “unusual visitor” up a tree near New York’s City Hall. The occupant of the tree, according to a contemporary newspaper account, was an escaped pet squirrel, […]
-
Sleep: When Brain Cells Shrink & Neuro Trash Is Flushed Away
This image from a mouse brain shows the fluid channels (purple) and glia cells (green) flush out the brain’s waste into blood vessels.Jeffrey Iliff1 and Maiken Nedergaard For humans, sleep is an absolute requirement for survival, almost on par with food and water. When we don’t get it, we not only feel terrible, but our […]
-
Reading Lines in the Earth Like Lines in a Book
Light snow on Mt. Jumbo highlights the different shorelines of prehistoric Lake Missoula.Photo by Don Hyndman, courtesy of the University of Montana You may not realize it, but all around you lie coded messages about the past. The curve of a hill, the shape of a lake, or the almost dinosaurian spine of that ridge […]
-
Teaching Your Body to Fight the Enemy Within
Some cancer therapies focus the attention of the immune system like a spotlight over Hollywood.Everett Collection / Shutterstock In early May, 1891, William Coley, a New York surgeon, had before him an interesting case. The patient, a 35-year-old Italian man, had sarcoma tumors in his neck and tonsils, and was slowly starving to death as […]
-
All Cells Bulletin: How Fame Powers Your Immune System
When talking about our health, we tend to refer breezily to “the immune system,” as if it were as simple as an electric fence keeping out invaders. And there’s certainly an electric fence component: The innate immune response is an ancient, relatively nonspecific kind of defense that triggers inflammation and the deployment of attack cells […]
-
How Unicorns Evolved Into Rhinos, Goblin Sharks & Olinguitos
Earlier this month there was a rare announcement, promoted widely by the press: a new mammal species had been discovered, the first carnivorous mammal identified in the Americas for 35 years. But the olinguito, as the raccoon-like carnivore is now known, was not spotted for its surprising looks or remarkable behaviors that set it apart […]
-
Why Everyone Thinks They’re Safer Than Average
It’s an odd quirk of the human mind that we tend to think we’re less likely to be affected a particular threat—be it the flu, a car accident, or a flood—than anyone else. Like the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average, this is a patent impossibility: Everyone can’t be […] -
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. And Death.
If you’ve ridden in a car piloted by a young or inexperienced driver lately, chances are you’ve had an unwelcome epiphany. When driving your own car every day, navigating familiar streets, the vehicle is an extension of your body and your home, a wee castle on wheels that protects you, obeys you, and gets you […] -
Far From Home Is Where the Heart Is
Travels Looking at Mt. Fuji, by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) It doesn’t take advanced technology to prove that we live relatively circumscribed lives. Like tiny planets, we process along a certain orbit, from home, the office, the grocery store, the kids’ school, and back home again, except for the occasional vacation. But thanks to the numerous […] -
The Problematic, Newfangled Hack That Is the Human Leg
If you were to design a leg for a bipedal animal from scratch, what would it look like? Don’t bother looking down at your own body for inspiration—you won’t find a good model there. If you want to make a really good bipedal leg, you should make one a lot like an ostrich’s, and nothing like […] -
The Feminine Smells That Get Sperm Moving
Sperm are the cheetahs of the microscopic world: Made of little more than molecular muscle and batteries, tipped with a payload of genetic information, they are optimized for speed. But to orient themselves before their epic, seven-inch sprint (it’s more impressive if you’re less than one three-thousandth that size), they first need to sniff out […]
