Monthly Archives: November 2010
Weird and Wonderful
A selection of the wackiest research in the world of science Good news for knuckle crackers A fifty year study has finally reached its climax and come to the conclusion that knuckle cracking does not cause arthritis. Finally, you can quieten all those who love to smugly tell you that you are slowly damaging your [...]
Posted in Life sciences, Medical & clinical 1 Comment
Book Reviews
The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion Are science and religion necessarily in conflict? Was the development of intelligent life on our planet an evolutionary inevitability? Will it be possible to maintain religious faith as astronomers and physicists discover more and more details about the early universe and how it formed? These are the sorts [...]
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Technology: Ready to Go Paperless?
Wing Ying Chow investigates the advantages of electronic lab notebooks Standing on the shoulders of giants is a phrase often used to describe the progression of science, with each generation of researchers building on the results of their predecessors. Successful experiments find their way into published papers, but what about the dead ends, the unsuccessful [...]
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History: Boosting Your Defence
Stephanie Glaser travels back through the history of vaccinations It has a diameter of only 30 nanometres and you don’t even notice as it travels quietly through your gut and into your bloodstream. Poliovirus then infects your central nervous system and slowly destroys your neurons. Your muscles weaken rapidly and you will be paralysed for [...]
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Arts & Reviews: Modern World, Modern Art
Ian Fyfe explores the way in which science and technology have revolutionised fine art The latest of the weird and wonderful exhibits at the Tate Modern may not appear to have any connection to science. Neither may the masterpieces of Warhol, Dali, Picasso or Monet. But without scientific innovation, we would have had none of [...]
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Perspective: Saving Species
Imogen Ogilvie gives her perspective on conservation and asks whether it is worth trying to conserve species at all We are in the middle of a mass extinction event. Conservationists spend enormous amounts of time and resources trying to minimise the number of species lost. Extinctions, both human-caused and otherwise, are by no means unique [...]
Posted in Earth & environment, Life sciences Leave a comment
Away from the Bench: Are You Receiving Me?
Sarah Leigh-Brown travels to London to see how the BBC produces the science radio programme Material World As a PhD student in molecular biology, expeditions to track orangutans or study Icelandic volcanoes are just not going to happen. Nevertheless, I recently got away from the bench to visit Bush House, nerve centre of the BBC [...]
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Behind the Science: The Man Who Weighed The Earth
Anders Aufderhorst-Roberts describes the life of the eccentric genius Henry Cavendish The cavendish family can be traced back through eight centuries and fifteen generations of history. The Cavendishes have consistently produced a large number of prominent men and women including statesmen, patrons of the arts, sponsors of education, intellectuals and socialites, as well as one [...]
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Focus: Gene Therapy
BlueSci explores the development of gene therapy, the remaining challenges and the recent triumphs Wendy Mak, Maja Choma and Jack Green take you on a journey through the past, present and future of gene therapy, the hurdles this technology has faced and why it is becoming accepted in mainstream medicine. The Beginnings of an Idea [...]
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The mammals’ time to shine