Yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times carried the headline: Chinese cheats rort NZ universities with fakes. The story begins: An investigation has uncovered a well-organised commercial cheating service for Chinese-speaking students in New Zealand. The long-standing business uses a network of tutors, some outside New Zealand, to write original assignments ordered by Chinese-speaking students attending New Zealand universities, […]
Continue readingYear: 2013
the gastric-brooding frog – not quite back from the dead
I first found out about gastric-brooding frogs (Rheobatrachus silus) when reading Stephen Jay Gould’s essay "Here Goes Nothing" (as published in the 1991 book Bully for Brontosaurus). As he said, these frogs really do live up to their name: the frog swallows its fertilised eggs, broods tadpoles in its stomach, and gives birth to young frogs […]
Continue readingsee-through creatures
This is a 'glass frog' (image from National Geographic): It's one of a number of transparent or translucent creatures featured on the National Geographic's "Weird & Wild" blog. (Actually I take issue with the Monarch butterfly image there, as strictly speaking we're seeing a transparent pupal case; the butterfly inside is definitely not see-through.) Glass […]
Continue readingtool use – even more widespread than you thought
Yesterday my ‘Facebook science feed’ (ie daily browsing) brought me this stunning image (click the picture for the hyperlink). It’s from the book Thinkers of the Jungle: the Orangutan Report (Shuster, Smits & Ullal, 2008) & shows a young orangutan apparently using a long stick in lieu of a spear, copying local fishermen as they […]
Continue readingscience challenges & science education
The National Science Challenges have been announced – and have already received a lot of attention (including on Sciblogs, with posts by my colleagues Grant, Siouxsie, and John – who also points at where the money’s going). What I’d like to address here is the comment by the Panel that it was concerned by the lack […]
Continue readingtrue facts…
OK, you could argue that you can’t have a ‘false’ fact 🙂 But that aside – I was recently introduced to this little gem of a video, True Facts About The Chameleon. Nice little sound-bites of information, rather lovely images – and the narrator’s voice-over had me in stitches. (But he’ll never replace Sir David […]
Continue readinga little extrapolation is a dangerous thing
The other day one of my friends sent me a link to this discussion of a recently published paper. (‘Published’ in the sense that it’s available through archiv, which I gather means it hasn’t been through peer review.) The actual paper is available here. Basically, the authors claim that life has increased in complexity – […]
Continue reading‘new zealand’s #1 way to lose weight’ – oh really?
As I’ve said previously, I find Facebook good for keeping up with friends & family, & profoundly irritating in its practice of ‘targeting’ ads to the user. Mind you, that offers endless opportunities for blogging (when one can find the time). And today I shall make use of that opportunity, for today FB offers me […]
Continue readingcaesarians & medical hypotheses
Many moons ago I used to do the occasional talk for Parents Centre ante-natal classes, on what to expect during a caesarian delivery. (I’d experienced an emergency C-section, so was happy to let others know what was involved.) So it was to be expected that this op.ed piece in today’s NZ Herald (in the "Life […]
Continue readingchocolate! just in time for easter
For years the husband has insisted that chocolate is a health food. He’s also spun me the line that eating it is good for the rainforest, as the mature cacao trees apparently grow in mature forest. So he’ll be happy with the Herald‘s story on his sweet treat, which has the enticing title of "Sweet news: […]
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