Using Chocolate to Exterminate Coyotes

... by Martin

Chocolate, like many of the things we eat regularly, is a potentially fatal poison, and so it should come as no surprise that a study by the unimaginatively-named John Johnston (at the USDA National Wildlife Research Center) shows that our favourite sweet could prove to be an effective pesticide, for use against coyotes [1].

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Happy Birthday to the Loch Ness Monster

... by Martin
Seventy-six years ago today, on November 12th 1933, Hugh Gray was walking back from chuch along the shores of Loch Ness when he saw an "object of considerable dimensions—making a big splash with spray on the surface." "I immediately got my camera ready and snapped the...
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Fact vs. Fiction

... by Martin
As a keen supporter of the environment myself, one of the biggest problems with the environmental movement is a tendency to exaggerate. One of the worst examples of this right now surrounds Project Karsei, an expedition to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or the "...
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Natural World

Brain implants show what attention looks like

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 02:20

Imagine you're playing a game of basketball--running down the length of the court, your shoes squeaking and you're fingers bouncing the ball about every 2 strides. You're darting left and right, about to sneak under the goal, leap over defenders, and slam it in for 2 points.

The fans cheer in a wave of pure elation. (Admittedly, a creative imagination.)

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An Antibiotic for an Anti-biote

Tue, 02/23/2010 - 00:04


What to do when you get the sore, swollen throat of strep throat or the painful, yellow oozing of an infected cut? Take an antibiotic.

What to do when you get the pesky coughing and sneezing of the common cold/flu or the itchy spots of chicken pox? Take an antiviral?

Not always.

The trouble with antiviral medications is that, unlike their widely used counterpart the antibiotic, they tend to damage human cells as well as nasty virus particles. Antibiotics (which kill bacteria not viruses) do minimal damage (relatively) to our own nearby cells.

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Protein...evolution...

Fri, 02/12/2010 - 21:51

If you ignore for a second the constant forward-looking attention Internet news demands and stretch your mind back to the Mad Cow Disease scare of 2004, you might remember thinking "how strange that proteins can act as pathogens in the mammalian body!"

Mad Cow scares us because it's an enigma--a protein disease that acts like it has DNA. But now it's looking more familiar, as researchers prove it mutates very much like a DNA or RNA virus or bacteria.

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Dangerous Dogs

Sat, 03/13/2010 - 10:32

The idea of tough-dogs is a fluid concept and the breed du jour has varied with the era.

When I was growing up, it was definitely German-Shepherds, then Dobermans. By 1976 this identity had been grafted onto Rotweilers, probably by people who had seen the demonic dog in the first Omen film. By the mid-80s, gangs in blighted urban America were using pit-bull types for security purposes, and for the first time a breed’s reputation equated pretty directly with its majority use.

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Biocontrol Trial Given Go-Ahead

Tue, 03/09/2010 - 15:04

A trial release of a tiny Japanese insect has been sanctioned by DEFRA to try to control the spread of Japanese Knotweed, a rapidly growing introduced plant that reportedly costs over £150 million per year to control.

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Attempting the Impossible

Thu, 02/25/2010 - 09:57


Since the year 2000, a global network of scientists has been attempting something that is seemingly impossible. The Census of Marine Life is the first ever effort to record everything that lives in the World’s Oceans and Seas.

The majority of all records of life in the oceans have been taken from depths of less than 100m, it is clear that even a ten year project such as COML will struggle to map every living organism. Even so, since the work began, researchers have identified over 5600 new species. To demonstrate the sheer scale of the marine world, the initial COML report estimates that there are still over 1 million species that have yet to be described.

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Empiricism comes naturally...

Mon, 02/08/2010 - 23:42


No career seemed insurmountable to me, as a teenager. Im not sure if it was sheer arrogance that got me into science--i'd like to think genuine curiosity and thirst for empiricism had something to do with it, too.

Yet, teens today struggle to see a science career in their future--but, not for the reasons you'd think (it's geeky/boring.)

In the 2010 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, teens show a strong understanding of the creative and fun aspects of science, but less understanding of the societal implications of that tinkering:

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Early Hominids = Sailors?

Wed, 02/03/2010 - 00:41


Ahoy mateys! Some early hominids were seafarers, according to recent research. The evidence? Sizable caches of double-sided human hand axes dating back 130,000 years, found in nine separate sites in southwestern Crete.

Crete is an island (of course)--and has been for 5 million years. To get there, hominids must have sailed!

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MicroEvolution vs MacroEvolution

Thu, 01/21/2010 - 22:18

Has MacroEvolution really never been observed? Have scientists really never seen one "kind" evolve into another "kind"? Surely information can't ever been added to the genome by unintelligent processes.

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A Tale of the Welsh's Beef with the Badger

Thu, 01/21/2010 - 09:20

Hello.

Welcome to my little bloggins. So, without any further ado I’ll begin.

2010 then, the International Year of Biodiversity no less. Kicking us off on the year’s quest to raise the public’s awareness of the plight of all the world’s ecosystems, and the critters that dwell within them, is the news that Welsh rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, has sanctioned a pro-active, non-selective cull of all badger populations in areas of west Wales, in a bid to stamp out the curse of bovine TB. Yay!

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