Susan Greenfield vs the Royal Institution

... by Martin

Rumours have been circulating for at least a month, but last night Susan Greenfield was sacked by the Royal Institution from her position as Director and, in apparent retaliation, announced that she would sue her former employers for discrimination.

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Using Chocolate to Exterminate Coyotes

... by Martin
Chocolate, like many of the things we eat regularly, is a potentially fatal poison, and so it should come as no surprise that a study by the unimaginatively-named John Johnston (at the USDA National Wildlife Research Center) shows that our favourite sweet could prove...
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A dark winter for UK physics

... by Sarah
Despite widespread financial gloom, 2009 has been an excellent vintage for physics and astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope's final servicing mission was declared a resounding success, LHC finally powered up after last year's false start, several new astronomy...
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Science

Brain implants show what attention looks like

Mon, 03/08/2010 - 02:20

Imagine you're playing a game of basketball--running down the length of the court, your shoes squeaking and you're fingers bouncing the ball about every 2 strides. You're darting left and right, about to sneak under the goal, leap over defenders, and slam it in for 2 points.

The fans cheer in a wave of pure elation. (Admittedly, a creative imagination.)

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An Antibiotic for an Anti-biote

Tue, 02/23/2010 - 00:04


What to do when you get the sore, swollen throat of strep throat or the painful, yellow oozing of an infected cut? Take an antibiotic.

What to do when you get the pesky coughing and sneezing of the common cold/flu or the itchy spots of chicken pox? Take an antiviral?

Not always.

The trouble with antiviral medications is that, unlike their widely used counterpart the antibiotic, they tend to damage human cells as well as nasty virus particles. Antibiotics (which kill bacteria not viruses) do minimal damage (relatively) to our own nearby cells.

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New Ultra hard diamond found in meteorite

Thu, 02/18/2010 - 21:00

Researchers at the Université de Lyon in France, have discovered what appears to be an unexpected new form of ultrahard diamond and a new ultrahard form that was previously predicted, both harder then commonly found diamond. These forms were found in the Havero meteorite, which fell to earth in Finland in 1971. The meteorite was split up and spread around research facilities around the world, with the Université de Lyon conducting research on the 30µm thick, 4mm by 4mm square piece of meteorite they were given.

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Protein...evolution...

Fri, 02/12/2010 - 21:51

If you ignore for a second the constant forward-looking attention Internet news demands and stretch your mind back to the Mad Cow Disease scare of 2004, you might remember thinking "how strange that proteins can act as pathogens in the mammalian body!"

Mad Cow scares us because it's an enigma--a protein disease that acts like it has DNA. But now it's looking more familiar, as researchers prove it mutates very much like a DNA or RNA virus or bacteria.

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What have the Scientists ever done for us?

Thu, 03/18/2010 - 12:15

Somewhere in the interior of PARLIAMENT. A darkened room with a very conspiratorial atmosphere. MANDELSON and BROWN are seated at a table at one end of the room. DARLING, dressed in Activist gear — black robes and a red sash around his head — is standing by a plan on the wall. He is addressing a committee of about eight Masked Activists. Their faces are partially hidden.

Darling:
We get in through the underground cooling system here... up through to the hadron collider chamber here... and the collider itself is in this big ring here. Having grabbed the collider, we inform Cox that it's in our custody and forthwith issue our demands. Any questions?

Harris:

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The Shocking Might of the Telly

Thu, 03/18/2010 - 08:36

Many of us wish that we'd live in a meritocracy, where the experts have the last say and help the society take the right choices. After all, that's part of the reason we love the internet, and the biggest reason why we would like the media to present information and science accurately, and not dumbed down. But believing the data is different than by reason of them being authority.

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Science is an Economic Solution (New Scientist)

Wed, 03/17/2010 - 16:32

Brian Cox was not faced with the toughest audiences at the Old Monk in Westminster last night. His talk was delivered to Westminster Skeptics; an assorted rabble of scientists, sceptics, bloggers and journalists led by legal blogger Jack of Kent, who meet once a month to discuss issues dear to rationalists. Brian's message - that science funding must be protected and ideally increased - was not a particularly hard one to sell to such an audience.

Continuing reading here or, read an edited version at New Scientist

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Dangerous Dogs

Sat, 03/13/2010 - 10:32

The idea of tough-dogs is a fluid concept and the breed du jour has varied with the era.

When I was growing up, it was definitely German-Shepherds, then Dobermans. By 1976 this identity had been grafted onto Rotweilers, probably by people who had seen the demonic dog in the first Omen film. By the mid-80s, gangs in blighted urban America were using pit-bull types for security purposes, and for the first time a breed’s reputation equated pretty directly with its majority use.

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Germany's Highest Court Rules On LHC: "Put Up, Or Shut Up!"

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 08:17

In February, Germany's Highest Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht ruled on the motion of a German residing in the Swiss city of Zurich, to pressure the German government into trying to stop the operation of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest machine ever built, and that also has an easy to misspell name.

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Biocontrol Trial Given Go-Ahead

Tue, 03/09/2010 - 15:04

A trial release of a tiny Japanese insect has been sanctioned by DEFRA to try to control the spread of Japanese Knotweed, a rapidly growing introduced plant that reportedly costs over £150 million per year to control.

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