Here’s this year’s recap of notable books I read, featuring Russians new and old, Scythians (all old), and criminals of various sorts. (Previous years: 2022, 2021, …, 2015.) 1965 vs. 2023 I wrote a few months ago about my excursion into 1965, reading seven books published in that year. I won’t revisit any of these … Continue reading The Year in Books, 2023
Each of us has a genome of about 3 billion DNA nucleotides — a sequence of 3 billion As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. Knowing what this sequence is, whether our own sequence or that of a bacterium, a barley plant, a baboon, or anything else, tells us about the repertoire of tools its genome encodes, … Continue reading How did we make reading genomes a million times cheaper? — What is biophysics? #18
Perhaps when blowing your nose, or the nose of a sick child, you’ve wondered where all this stuff comes from. How can one nose make so much mucus? This is #17 in our series of biophysical questions (#1, #16). The answer involves electrical forces and the physical character of mucus. Mucus, the gooey liquid secreted … Continue reading How can one nose make so much mucus? — What is biophysics? #17
The Eighteenth Elephant 