Ever since early humans first tasted alcohol from fermented fruit, people have been fascinated by drugs that affect our conscious state, whether that is by making us drowsy or by causing hallucinations. From caffeine to cannabis, we now have a vast array of these drugs, but scientists still don’t fully understand a class of consciousness-altering drugs that is crucial to modern medicine: general anaesthetics.… Read the rest
Intermittent Fasting – Reshaping the world of dieting
Credit: Victovoi
Looks are important to many of us, and nowadays it seems as though nearly everyone is on some sort of diet. Yet these diets can seem more like fads than solutions and we face the problem of being able to fish out those that provide long term results that are backed up by the scientific research which they claim to be based on.… Read the rest
The Survival of the Sloth Bear – The next species to fall victim to human activity
The world is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction: current vertebrate loss is at a rate higher than any other extinction event in history. Even ecologically resilient species like the sloth bear aren’t safe from this human-caused crisis.
The sloth bear, Melursus ursinus, is a member of the Ursidae family and is instantly recognisable by the crescent marking that adorns its chest.… Read the rest
I, Superorganism: Learning to love your inner ecosystem – Jon Turney ****
I would call this book ‘surprising’, but that doesn’t even begin to do it justice. Turney takes the reader on the ultimate tour of our inner workings. Our bodies harbour trillions of microbes, and the majority of these help us go about our everyday lives.… Read the rest
Interview – Rebecca Nesbit
Rebecca Nesbit studied butterfly migration for her PhD, then worked for a start-up company training honeybees to detect explosives. She now works in science communication and her projects have ranged from a citizen science flying ant survey to visiting universities around the world with Nobel Laureates.… Read the rest
Review: How to Speak Science – Bruce Benamran ***
I can’t remember a book where my mental picture of what the star rating would be has varied so much. At first glance, it looked like a solid 4 star title. It looks fun (despite the odd title – it sounds like it’s a book on public speaking for geeks) and a flick through showed that it covers a huge amount of science topics, mostly physics – so it was promising as a beginner’s overview. … Read the rest
Nano Nightmares
Nanotechnology – manufactured items on the scale of a billionths of a metre – like genetically modified food or nuclear power, often produces a knee-jerk reaction. It’s somehow ‘not natural’ and so is considered scary and dangerous.… Read the rest