By now many of you have probably seen images of green-glowing zebrafish, or pigs whose snout & trotters glow in the dark. In both cases the animals are genetically modified and are expressing a fluorescent protein originally sourced from a jellyfish. (The body form of a jellyfish is a medusa, while that of sea anemones & […]
Continue readingCategory: new science stories
just how small can a small snail be?
When I was a kid I used to collect shells on the beach – got my Girl Guides 'collectors' badge & everything 🙂 So I really enjoyed reading this post over on Sciblogs NZ. And that in turn reminded me of an article I saw recently on microsnails. According to that article, "Microsnail" is the […]
Continue readingthe speed of a chameleon’s tongue
In 2012 the world was introduced to some of the smallest-known vertebrates: tiny chameleons. My good friend Grant wrote about them at the time, & I set an essay assignment for my first-years on these tiny beasties. How tiny is tiny? The following images are from the original paper, published in PLoS one by Glaw, Kohler, […]
Continue readingdid Ötzi have a tummy bug?
Well, probably not1, in the sense that most would place on the term 'tummy bug' (where a close proximity to the toilet is a Good Thing), but it turns out that he did have some rather interesting intestinal bacteria. Ötzi is perhaps better known as the 'Iceman', who died around 5,300 years ago in the […]
Continue readingshipworms, pillbugs and gribbles – oh my!
I've never heard of gribbles before, & did wonder if they were in some way related to tribbles (or a certain US politician's hair…). But no, it turns out that gribbles are small, wood-boring crustaceans. And they look rather cute: Image by Prof Simon McQueen-Mason & Dr Simon Cragg However, their cuteness should not obscure […]
Continue readingcrossing the great (prokaryote-eukaryote) divide
I’ve always enjoyed Nick Lane’s writing1, so naturally an article he wrote for the ABC Science website caught my eye. Titled “Evolution of complex life on Earth, take 2?”, it discusses an organism that appears to be neither prokaryote nor eukaryote, but something in-between. There’s a great divide between the cells that fit the description […]
Continue readingtips for effective on-line science outreach
As you'll have gathered, I'm finding Facebook – and now Twitter – great sources of information, whether it's for teaching, sharing with my students (& others!), or blogging about. And today, this paper popped up on my Twitter feed: Ten Simple Rules for Effective On-line Outreach. Because it's published on a PLoS journal (in this […]
Continue readingperhaps cancer and cardiovascular disease aren’t such ‘modern’ diseases after all
One of the books I'm currently reading is the excellent The Man Who Touched His Own Heart, by Rob Dunn. It's a fascinating and beautifully-written narrative of how our understanding of both the heart and of ways to treat its disorders have developed over the centuries (& yes, I will review the book properly when I've […]
Continue readinga tale of two tails
Lizards, like us, are chordates. One of the defining characteristics that all chordates share at some point in their development is the presence of a notochord: a stiff rod of tissue that runs along the dorsal side of the animal, just beneath the hollow dorsal nerve cord. (Yes, hollow. This is the result of its […]
Continue readingwhy paper cuts hurt
I suppose one of the benefits of e-readers & ‘paperless’ offices (haha) is a reduction in the risks of paper cuts. Because those cuts jolly well hurt! Part of that may just be because they usually involve fingers & those are in use so much that our attention is constantly drawn to the afflicted part. […]
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