Back to Wallacea: Sumbawa [en]

After my Singapore stopover, I headed straight to the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Sumbawa lies between Lombok in the west and Flores in the east. Its location can be classified in many different ways. Amongst others, Sumbawa is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Lesser Sunda Islands, the province of Nusa Tenggara Barat …

Perspective [en]

I love how science puts things in perspective: The earth is a microbial planet, on which macroorganisms are recent additions—highly interesting and extremely complex in ways that most microbes aren’t, but in the final analysis relatively unimportant in a global context. […] Microbial life on this planet would remain largely unchanged were all plant and …

xkcd on Arsenic-Based Life [en]

I’ve enjoyed reading the strips at xkcd for a couple of years now. Today’s comic is a great proof of how quickly xkcd picks up current scientific (and social) topics: This of course refers to the recent Science Magazine article entitled A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus (PDF). Apparently this …