A while ago now I discussed how some plants are able to warn others when they’re under attack by grazing animals. Now it seems that these responses and interactions are even more subtle – a new paper describes how signalling chemicals in tobacco plants can be altered by the grazers’ saliva (Allmann & Baldwin, 2010). […]
Continue readingMonth: August 2010
X-rays & ouches
X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, a discovery that was to bring him the first Nobel Prize for physics. (No, I’m not really going to trespass on Marcus’s territory! Well, not for long.) Like many other scientists of the time, Roentgen was experimenting with electtrifying the thin gases in vacuum tubes. One night […]
Continue readinghow a fungus avoids a plant’s immune system
Your immune system is a wonderful, complex, multipartite mechanism that usually allows you to fight off the attentions of the various pathogenic organisms (bacterial, fungal, and viral) that you’ll meet during your life. I say ‘usually’ because it’s not always successful on its own, and even where it is, you can be laid low for […]
Continue readingour lives with dogs, & other interesting reading
I have a dog. As a result, papers to do with dogs tend to catch my eye 🙂 On his blog Neuroanthropology, Greg Downey reviews an upcoming book by Pat Shipman and discusses humanity’s long relationship with canines. Beginning with the point that "the first animals domesticated were not food sources, but a fellow predator and […]
Continue readingfungal parasites & zombie ants
Parasites are ubiquitous. I remember watching a video (years ago, while I was teaching at secondary school) about parasites that make humans their home. Lice, eyelash mites (yes, really!), various intestinal worms… I tell you, I had psychosomatic itching for days after seeing that! Then I got my hands on Carl Zimmer’s wonderful book, Parasite Rex – […]
Continue readingthe scientists of tomorrow, today
On Thursday I was privileged to spend several hours (actually, a lot of the day as we didn’t finish until about 8.45pm) judging the Waikato regional science fair. I always enjoy doing this as you get to speak with some wonderful young people who are doing some really good science. (It acts as something of […]
Continue readingcat behaviour explained
Those of you owned by cats will appreciate how accurate this is 🙂 (From i can haz cheezburger)
Continue readingoxygenated food for the brain?
I was reading a couple about ‘raw foods’ today. This is ‘raw foods’ as in ‘foods that you don’t heat above 40oC in processing them.’ It’s also as in, a vegetarian diet. (I do rather enjoy vegetarian food & when we had a French exchange student staying with us that was pretty much all we […]
Continue readinga solar salamander
This is a new story & potentially a very exciting one (& I must thank Grant for drawing this story to my attention!). A Nature News item (Petherick, 2010) describes the discovery of green algae apparently living within the cells of salamander embryos. I’ll wait with interest for the published paper, but if this finding’s […]
Continue readingbut surely if it does no harm…
There’s a lot been written in the blogosphere around what’s known as ‘complementary & alternative medicine.’ (I would argue that there’s no such thing – if it works ie improves/cures the patient’s health, then it’s medicine). In any debate around the use of CAM someone is likely to say that at least it does no […]
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