What is one thing you can’t live without?
Mitochondria.
PROMPT: Can’t Live Without
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Tag Archives: Biology
PROMPT: Useless Fact
What’s a completely useless fact you love sharing?
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The gas exchange surface area of the lungs of the average adult human (if one flattened out all those balloon-like alveoli) is about the area of a tennis court.
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BOOK: “Biological War” by Annie Jacobsen
Biological War: A Scenario by Annie JacobsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher site — Penguin
As in her last book, Jacobsen builds a horrifying scenario that is made all the more horrifying by a well-researched examination of the possibilities and probabilities of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The previous book imagined a hypothetical nuclear war started by North Korea. This one begins with an accidental lab leak of a “chimera” (a biological weapon that combines infectious agents to increase contagiousness, lethality, incurableness, or some combination thereof) from a Russian laboratory.
One might wonder how apt a title with “war” in it is for an accidental even. It turns out that even an accident might have to be treated an act of war. (Imagine the nation in which the accident takes place has built a working vaccine. That country might not have intended to release the weapon, but they may come to see military advantage in keeping the vaccine to themselves, letting enemies be weakened as other nations have to develop their own countermeasures from scratch [which we know from COVID can take many months — if not longer.])
Jacobsen does a fine job of mixing in moments in which outcomes are worse than one might expect with instances in which luck shines on people (i.e. the way the real world works.) In many cases, Jacobsen was able to draw from real world events that happened during the COVID pandemic, making adjustments for the very different nature of the infectious agent in this scenario. Building from the “fog of war” of COVID, the reader is shown how events might go wrong in ways that could at first blush seem unrealistic — except for the fact that similar missteps already happened in the real world.
As with Jacobsen’s book on nuclear war, the whole scenario takes place over only a few days, with an epilogue that reflects on the longer-term ramifications of the scenario.
I found this book hard to put down. It reads like a novel but with the added feasibility that comes with interviewing experts and studying the relevant history and policy. It is a scary scenario to be certain, but it keeps the reader engaged throughout. I’d highly recommend this book for all readers who can handle reading a doomsday scenario.
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BOOK: “What If? 2” by Randall Monroe
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall MunroeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Author site
The Venn Diagram intersect of “hilarious” and “educational” tends to be sparsely occupied territory, but it’s where Randall Monroe lives. This sequel continues the approach set in the original volume, take a completely absurd question that can be answered with science and do just that with frequent interjections of sarcasm. Some examples of the questions addressed are: How many pigeons would it take to fly a person to the top of a skyscraper? Can all the world’s bananas fit in all the world’s churches? How much real dinosaur is in a plastic toy dinosaur? How many people worth of dead skin cells does a person consume and inhale over a lifetime?
The book uses many stick figure cartoons and other line drawings to both clarify the material and for the sake of humor. While it might seem like these questions could be answered hastily (as a dad might by saying, “You’re an idiot. Go away!”) most take several pages of elaboration because Monroe considers the many complexities of the question and of finding a scientific answer. There are sections throughout called “Short Answers” which include many a question so ridiculous or intuitive that being dismissive seems like the right approach.
If you’re interested in science but still find it goes down better with chortles and chuckles, I’d highly recommend this book.
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BOOK: “Long for this World” by Jonathan Weiner
Long For This World: The Strange Science of Immortality by Jonathan WeinerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Author’s book site
This book considers the science around the question: will there come a day when human beings live forever (or at least considerably longer than we’ve achieved to date? — i.e. hundreds or thousands of years.) A secondary question, explored in the last of the book’s three parts, is should we want to?
It was a courageous decision to write this book because it focuses heavily on the ideas of one particularly controversial figure, Aubrey de Grey. And by “controversial” I don’t mean to the general public, a public which has limited understanding of the science involved, but rather a man who is controversial to many (perhaps, most) of his peers. Of course, with a Pulitzer under one’s belt, one can afford to take a few chances. (Weiner won in 1997 for The Beak of the Finch, a popular science work on evolutionary biology.) To be fair, Weiner does not present Grey’s ideas from the perspective of an acolyte. On the contrary, he is clearly skeptical and not shy about presenting the countervailing arguments put out by others in the gerontological field.
I can see several reasons why Weiner chose to focus on Aubrey de Grey. First, De Grey is an eccentric figure, and that makes for more interesting reading. Second, De Grey also takes the boldest possible stance on the topic (i.e. that there is no reason humanity won’t be able to overcome aging and death, given sufficient time and effort.) Finally, De Grey has a readily digestible roadmap for eliminating aging. De Grey identifies seven problems that must be solved, arguing that the last — i.e. defeating cancer — is the only one that will present a true challenge in the long run.
While I wasn’t converted to a belief that immortality is inevitable (and that wasn’t the book’s objective, though it may be de Gray’s,) the book does offer interesting food-for-thought, both on the scientific question of what it would take and on the philosophical question of whether we should want to.
If you’re interested in aging and mortality, I’d recommend reading this book.
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BOOK: “The Mind Electric” by Pria Anand
The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria AnandMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Simon & Schuster
There are A LOT of pop neuroscience books out there that reflect upon what we know about the brain from what goes wrong with it. I thought I was done reading such books because, while the first few are fascinating, they tend to retell the same stories.
That said, I’m glad I read this one, and what made it worth reading was that the science was explored in a very personal way, and I don’t just mean that the author recited her own personal experiences or those of her patients (though she does both,) but rather that the whole book is imbued with her worldview. She relates maladies of the mind to works of literature, of Greek and Hindu mythology, and to other aspects of culture in a relatable manner.
Another factor that sets this book apart is that its author shows a passion for language. In that sense, it reminded me of the works of Oliver Sacks (who she references a number of times,) rather than your average — articulate but linguistically conservative — neuroscientist.
I’d recommend this book for any readers interested in neuroscience, particularly anyone looking for a book that sets itself apart from the crowd. (I don’t recall it even mentioning Phineas Gage, which I thought was a requirement of all such books.)
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Evolution [Free Verse]
Anywhere copies are made,
but copies aren't exact,
selection will take place.
Some erroneous copies will
be more beloved than others.
Some errors will propagate.
Some errors will die out.
Thus is language,
thus is chemistry,
and thus is life.
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Lion-tailed Macaque [Lyric Poem]
I came upon a Lion-tailed Macaque,
And was instantly taken aback.
Sure, its tail was lion-like, but what's weird
Is that namers didn't call upon that beard!
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BOOK REVIEW: A Gardener’s Guide to Botany by Scott Zona
A Gardener’s Guide to Botany: The biology behind the plants you love, how they grow, and what they need by Scott ZonaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: December 6, 2022
This beginner’s guide to botany is well conceived and executed. The photographs are beautiful and well-chosen to help the reader understand the complexities discussed in the text. The text gets definitionally dense in places, but also presents fascinating ideas in plain English. I learned a lot from the book, particularly where it was less steeped in technical terminology and details and offered intriguing ideas and examples.
While the book’s eight chapters aren’t formally divvied up, I would place them into three groups. Chapters one and two are about what plants are and how they are organized to do what they do. Chapters three through five are about what plants need to survive (water, light, and nutrients, respectively) and why. The last three chapters explore the main activities plants engage in (i.e. defense, reproduction, and seed dispersal.)
I found this book to be informative and readable, and if you’re looking for a basic guide to botany that skillfully employs photographs, I’d have a look at this one.
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BOOK REVIEW: Body Am I by Moheb Costandi
Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness by Moheb CostandiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
In this book you’ll learn about: a man who wanted a perfectly healthy leg amputated, a fisherman who felt like his hands were crab claws, a woman who felt she wasn’t responsible for the actions of her hand, various people who’ve experienced “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” [i.e. feeling one has shrunk or stretched,] and about many other issues stemming from the body’s sensory and motor integration with what we think of as the mind. For most of us, the most powerful take-away to be gained from this book is just how wonderful and awe-worthy it is that we have bodies that are so well integrated and coordinated that we can go about life engaging in all sorts of fascinating and productive activities.
While this isn’t the only book that addresses this subject, I think it’s a topic worth learning more about and reflecting upon in depth. We can get so out of touch with the fact that our body is integrated with our mental and sensory experiences that we take “brain in a vat” scenarios as a given for the near future, as if one is the sum of one’s neuronal connections. This book will disabuse one this notion. In fact, the final chapter (Ch. 10) questions the proposition that copying consciousness is a matter of mastering such neuronal mapping. It’s easy to miss how much of our emotional experience is rooted in what’s happening in our guts and heart, and how much all the non-central nervous system parts of the body play in our conscious experience of the world.
I learned a great deal from this book and would highly recommend it.
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