I’m really enjoying running on-line tuts with Schol Bio students, because the questions & discussions are so interesting. (So, hopefully the students enjoy them too!) Last week we got onto talking about the enzyme lactase and the fact that in some populations many individuals continue to produce it into adulthood (thus making them lactose-tolerant, & […]
Continue readingWith the discovery last week of 2 cases of measles in Auckland, I thought I’d pull together a few of the posts that I wrote during our last outbreak (in 2019) but which are still very relevant. Measles isn’t a benign disease, and unfortunately vaccination coverage for it has declined over the last few years, […]
Continue readingFeatured image from https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/native-animals/native-animal-facts/brush-tailed-possum Recently I shared this Spinoff article about extinction on Twitter, & tagged the Science Learning Hub as the NZ focus makes the article a good fit with their mahi supporting student learning. But I was somewhat surprised to have someone else pop up saying that they wouldn’t read it because, […]
Continue readingThis gorgeous little insect is a female Australian bag moth (Cebysa leucotelus) – in this image she’s sitting on the netting we’re using to keep the late-season cabbage butterflies off our brassicas, but I suspect that normally she’d have been a little harder to spot. After all, from the tips of her antennae to the […]
Continue readingI suspect many of those reading (like many of my friends) will have watched the series The Last of Us. (I haven’t, because I’m fairly sure I’d be spending a fair bit of time with my eyes shut!¹) What you might not realise is that the fungal “protagonist” (for want of a better word) is actually […]
Continue readingPermafrost is “any ground that remains completely frozen – 0°C or colder – for at least two years straight”, and as you’d expect is found at high altitudes or in polar regions. It acts like a deep-freezer – scientists have found mammoths buried in permafrost that were so well preserved that at least one field […]
Continue readingWhat is a mastodon, anyway? Like mammoths (on the left in the image above), mastodons were common during the last ice age, but the two elephant-like creatures are fairly distant relatives. The more-familiar mammoths were close cousins of modern elephants (a fact that is of interest to those considering doing a Jurassic Park on mammoths – […]
Continue readingThis post is intended for students who are preparing for the 2023 Schol Bio exam, and discusses material covered in a tutorial meeting. One of the obvious questions is, what’s the examiner looking for? Like the NCEA subjects. Scholarship subjects all have assessment specifications. You’ll find the Biology one here. The written exam will comprise […]
Continue readingWhen I wrote this, 5 years ago, pangolins were in deep strife due to human greed & stupidity (plus a side order of habitat destruction). I saw this bittersweet video on Twitter today, & thought I’d repost my original article, since nothing has changed. Baby Pangolin ❤️ pic.twitter.com/DyuRU6OwYm — Sunlit Rain (@Earthlings10m) February 12, 2023 […]
Continue readingThe topic of an ad for a university not that far to the north of where I live popped up in casual conversation today. It was – IMHO – a pretty awful advert, with the implication that science doesn’t change so do an arts degree if you want to think differently. I mean, yuck. But […]
Continue reading
