Posts tagged science

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde makes sculptures out of clouds. I wrote about it for New Scientist. 

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde makes sculptures out of clouds. I wrote about it for New Scientist. 

I published a new Creatology blogpost on Scientific American with a long audio piece, which is a conversation with ‘Wild’ author Jay Griffiths, interspersed with readings from her amazing book. Yes, it’s almost half an hour long. Is this longform journalism? I’m feeling a bit anxious that people might not have half an hour in their busy lives to sit down and listen to the thing. But all of the readings, and Jay’s answers to my questions were engrossing, and I didn’t just find it hard to cut - I didn’t want to. I wanted to leave the conversation pretty much whole and unedited.  If you’ve read ‘Wild’, and you’re a mad fan like me, you’ll get it. I’m not alone: KT Tunstall, Radiohead and The Strokes are all into the ‘Wild’ phenomenon. There’s something deeply moving and - dare I say - healing about reading the book. It’s not a book to take lightly - instead absorb it, let it grow roots inside you. If you feel lost, let it find you.  That’s all I have to say about ‘Wild’.

I published a new Creatology blogpost on Scientific American with a long audio piece, which is a conversation with ‘Wild’ author Jay Griffiths, interspersed with readings from her amazing book. Yes, it’s almost half an hour long. Is this longform journalism? I’m feeling a bit anxious that people might not have half an hour in their busy lives to sit down and listen to the thing. But all of the readings, and Jay’s answers to my questions were engrossing, and I didn’t just find it hard to cut - I didn’t want to. I wanted to leave the conversation pretty much whole and unedited. 

If you’ve read ‘Wild’, and you’re a mad fan like me, you’ll get it. I’m not alone: KT Tunstall, Radiohead and The Strokes are all into the ‘Wild’ phenomenon. There’s something deeply moving and - dare I say - healing about reading the book. It’s not a book to take lightly - instead absorb it, let it grow roots inside you. If you feel lost, let it find you. 

That’s all I have to say about ‘Wild’.

Story for SciDev.net: new target for malaria vaccine

 Tidbits from the cutting room floor:

Malaria causes about one million deaths a year globally, most of which are children in Africa. Plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous malaria parasite, causing almost all malaria deaths.

People have been hunting for a malaria vaccine for more than 50 years. It has proved an incredibly tough nut to crack - but this new research gives hope for an efficient vaccine. Scientists from the developing world have a key role to play.

“Some of the proteins we have tested in this paper have been in collaboration with scientists in Senegal, and these are parasites freshly isolated from people’s arms,” said Julian Rayner from the Wellcome Sanger Institute. This is important because parasites replicated in the lab for decades might be different to current strains. 

Partnerships with researchers around the developing world will be continue to be important while working on the vaccine, including work on malaria parasite genome sequencing, he added.

“It is only by understanding what is happening in the field in terms of the diversity of the parasite, in terms of the different mechanisms that the field parasites use to invade, we will know whether we have a vaccine that has a real chance of being applied or not,” he said.

I’ve been so excited for a while, but today I can finally reveal that I will be blogging in the new Scientific American Blog Network. 

I’ll be writing regular blogs for the Creatology blog, which is a group blog co-authored with Gozde Zorlu and Joseph Milton. We describe it as “An experimental blog coupling creativity and science.”

If you have any suggestions for things for us to cover please let us know on Facebook or over Twitter @creatologyblog!