I’m currently reading through the background information prepared for Hamilton City councillors ahead of the meeting they had yesterday, at which they decided to end the fluoridation of Hamilton’s water supply. Right now I’m beginning to think that those of us who are science educators & communicators have done something very wrong, because in the […]
Continue readingCategory: new science stories
a 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 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 readingfaecal transplants as a treatment for persistent gut infections
I first heard about faecal transplants while listening to one of Mark Crislip’s podcasts (based on one of his posts at Science-Based Medicine. I always find his work informative & entertaining, though his sarcasm may not be to everyone’s taste). With the title ‘The species in the faeces’ I knew I was going to hear […]
Continue readingstem cells, cosmetics – and unexpected consequences
I’m starting to think about this year’s teaching: what I’m planning, what worked last year & what didn’t, things that need to be revised. One thing I’ll be doing a bit more of is ‘flip teaching’, something that worked well last semester in helping students learn about & gain an understanding of recombinant DNA technologies. […]
Continue readingsweet memories
I’ve just found a new blog that is a must-follow: Becky Crew’s Running Ponies. Run, don’t walk, over there – and read wondrous posts such as her discussion of a study that found chocolate** appears to enhance snails’ ability to form lasting memories. I wonder what will happen to chocolate sales at the uni shop, […]
Continue readingimmortal cells
Last year one of the books on my reading list was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. I found it a fascinating and moving story. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer, but even before her death doctors had begun to culture cells removed from her cervix (something that was done without her […]
Continue readingscience – it’s not magic!
One of the things I like about my job is that there’s always the opportunity to learn new things. Today I learned about episomes. Not being an actual geneticist & all, it was a novel term to me. An episome is defined as: a portion of genetic material that can exist independent of the main […]
Continue readingmore on active learning in the biology classroom
This is a piece I first wrote for Talkingteaching 🙂 Yesterday I was up in Auckland at Scicon (the national secondary science teachers’ conference. There’ve been some great presentations, including a lovely on on bioluminescence by fellow sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles (did you know that our very own NZ glow worms mate for hours & then […]
Continue readingliterate primates?
A while back now, I wrote a brief piece commenting on the ability of at least some chimpanzees to recognise numbers. So it didn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that members of a baboon troop could distinguish between ‘real’ words and random strings of letters. Yes, really. A group of psychologists led by Jonathan […]
Continue reading