Every so often the issue of regulating supplements and complementary & alternative medicines comes up. And when it does, you tend to get responses that include: these ‘treatments’ are natural & so completely OK; people have the right to use them to self-medicate; & so on. I don’t have an issue with the ‘right to self-medicate’ […]
Continue readingMonth: May 2010
what science has given us
Had a not-the-best ending to a platelets donation today (syncope = fainting; very strange for platelets since you get all the red stuff back…) & I’m still feeling somewhat under the weather & don’t feel like writing a ‘serious’ post. So… what follows is something I’ve had tucked away for a while, wondering when to […]
Continue readingputting therapeutic touch to the test
It’s ‘science fair’ time of year again & I’ve volunteered to be a judge at the local fair. I’ve always enjoyed science fairs, starting from way back when my siblings & I regularly entered in the Hawkes Bay event. It’s great meeting a whole bunch of up-&-coming young scientists, & they do some wonderful projects. […]
Continue readingsensing nonsense
The idea for this post comes via the team at the most excellent Silly Beliefs blog: Stuff (repository of news & what looks like an awful lot of other stuff) reported about a Massey University research project. The Stuff report kicks off by saying Spirits are increasingly making their presence felt in New Zealand, spurred on by celebrity […]
Continue readingdeath shapes us all
Personal & societal attitudes to death shape the way we view the inevitable ending of our lives. And experiencing the deaths of others, particularly those close to us, can affect us greatly. But at a much deeper, cellular level, death shapes our very being.
Continue readingacademic language & learning about science
One of the biggest challenges faced by students of biology (or any science, really) is coming to terms with the language of science. Scientific language is precise, it’s concise, and it uses a dauntingly large number of new terms. (I saw it written somewhere – sorry, too much marking & the memory’s gone bad! – […]
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