Mega Penguin

2 October, 2014 by

Penguins are certainly one of the more cute and charismatic of the Antarctic fauna, but would people be so fond of penguins if they were over 2 metres tall? Fossils recently unearthed in Antarctica have revealed that giant penguins used to roam this icy continent.

Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, discovered on Seymour island off the Antarctic peninsula, was a penguin weighing 115 kilograms and towering above most people at 2m (6ft7). That’s two and a half times heavier, and nearly twice the height of an Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri)!

Continue reading →

Turning Blood into Brains

28 September, 2014 by

When you think crayfish, you probably think of food rather than groundbreaking medical research, but a paper published last month in Developmental Cell reports an incredible neurological feature of the humble lobster. Stem cells, blueprint cells that produce new cells, are vital for repairing wear-and-tear. Research from the US revealed a remarkable talent in Crayfish – they can grow new brain stem cells from their blood.

Continue reading →

The Truth Behind the Badger Cull

17 September, 2014 by

In the UK, the Badger Cull has become a national news item, and has stimulated fierce public debate, campaigns, protests and petitions from both sides. Many impassioned articles have been written over the last few months and years, but in many cases, even reputable authors have been guilty of cherry-picking data to support their claim. Everybody seems to have an opinion on the UK badger cull, and this often obscures the real science that is being done to investigate this crucial social and economic issue.

A Little Background

For those of you who haven’t heard about it, the badger cull is a UK government policy aimed at reducing the incidence of bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis) by reducing transmission rates from a suspected infection reservoir in the European badger (Meles meles). It has been implemented on and off since the early 1970s, despite legal protection of the badger since 1986.

Continue reading →

The Evolutionary Origins of Coffee

15 September, 2014 by

Each second 26,000 cups of coffee are consumed globally. That’s over 93 million cups an hour, or an astonishing 2 billion cups a day! Why is coffee the most popular beverage on Earth? Well it might have something to do with all that lovely caffeine it contains. We are a species thoroughly addicted to caffeine; the most popular psychoactive substance in the world. Recent research into the genomics of the coffee plant is shedding some light on the evolutionary processes behind the world’s most popular drug, and revealing some of the reasons it is popular not just with humans, but with insects, too.

Continue reading →

Neanderthal Art

10 September, 2014 by

Neanderthals were once portrayed as unintelligent, uncultured brutes, but that picture is beginning to change. They are increasingly being viewed now as intelligent, cooperative creatures who performed cultural rituals and traditions and who mourned their dead. A discovery published in PNAS this year indicates they may have even had art. Art is considered to be one of the highest expressions of complex, abstract thought, and for a long time it was believed to be uniquely human (uniquely Homo sapien, that is).

Researchers excavating a cave in Gibraltar found an engraving on the rock wall in undisturbed ground alongside Neanderthal tools. The engraving from Gorham’s cave, which looks suspiciously like a hashtag, was placed prominently on the wall suggesting it may have been a message to visitors or intruders. There is no direct evidence, however, that the design actually means anything, but it seems likely it was intended to be seen. Interestingly, the engraving appears at a junction in the cave, where the cave changes direction by 90 degrees. It’s hard not to speculate that the design might therefore be intended to share some spatial information, a “You are Here”, perhaps. Likewise, it may have signalled that the cave was occupied.

Continue reading →

Martha: The Last Passenger Pigeon

5 September, 2014 by

The passenger pigeon used to be the most numerous bird on Earth. Then, in less than a century, it was driven to extinction at the hands of humans. This month marks the 100th anniversary of Martha, the last passenger pigeon’s death.

There used to be billions of passenger pigeons. Literally. And that’s passenger pigeons, not carrier pigeons by the way, which are still alive and well today. When Europeans arrived in North America, there were between 3 and 5 billion passenger pigeons there. The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, were highly sociable, living in huge colonies with up to 100 nests in a single tree. Continue reading →

Lighter than a Feather:
Aerogels

2 September, 2014 by

Frozen smoke, the world’s lightest solid material, is hard at work powering supercapacitors, insulating space ships, firefighters, surfers and rockets, thickening paints and cosmetics, performing classified roles in nuclear weapons, collecting interstellar dust… It is one of the lightest, most expensive substances on Earth, and we are surrounded by it.

Aerogel005Aerogel, also known as frozen smoke, solid smoke or solid air, is an ultralight synthetic material produced from a gel. Composed of 99.98% air, it looks and feels like very light polystyrene, with a slight blueish tinge. First developed in the 1930s as the result of a bet, aerogels are incredibly light, strong and flexible, and are being applied to everything from home decor to aerospace engineering.

Continue reading →

This post is available for early view by patrons. It becomes public at 6:52pm on Tuesday August 20th, 2024.

The Effect of Wildfires on Climate and Health

13 August, 2014 by

Humans burn plant matter for many reasons; clearing forests for agricultural land, slash-and-burn agriculture, ritual savannah burning, wildfires. Recent research by Professor Mark Jacobson at Standford University suggests that burning living matter may contribute far more to climate change than previously thought. This is because, unlike other types of emissions, burning plant matter releases carbon particles into the atmosphere which accelerate warming. These particles are also very damaging to human health, and are responsible for the deaths of 250,000 people every year.

Each year, humans pump nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are now certain that these emissions, along with other greenhouse gases, are altering our climate and warming the planet. One major source of carbon dioxide emissions is burning plant matter, either deliberately or because of wildfires. But the contribution of fires to climate change has not previously been quantified.

Continue reading →

The Ants Who Store Our Carbon

7 August, 2014 by

As we are very rapidly discovering, living creatures have the ability to drastically alter the climate and weather systems on Earth, and the greatest changes are achieved by the species that are greatest in number. Ants may be no exception to this rule, and recent geological research suggests that ants may be providing a vital counter-balance to our CO2 emitting ways. Ants may be cooling the climate as we warm it. But are ants the solution to climate change?

Ants and Climate Change

A recent study published in Geology has begun to reveal the role ants play in keeping Earth’s atmosphere cool. They might be small, but ants are ubiquitous on Earth, found on every continent except Antarctica and numbering over 15,000 species. They have the potential to have a big impact. The study published this month showed that ants collect minerals from their environment and change them into rock, inadvertently trapping carbon dioxide gas in the rock as they do so. This process is identical to the way in which atmospheric CO2 is sequestered by the oceans, and naturally weathered on land.

Continue reading →

Rat Regrets

19 June, 2014 by

We like to think that our more complex emotions are uniquely human, although researchers continually thwarting that belief with science. This week, another of our emotions came under threat – regret. Nobody has ever demonstrated regret in another non-human animal. Until now. A study released this month in Nature claims to have found evidence that rats are capable of feeling regret, a complex emotion distinct from mere disappointment.

Disappointment is when we recognise that we didn’t get as much as we expected, whereas to regret is to recognise that our actions are the reason behind this – that an alternative action, a different decision, would have produced a better outcome. In this study, researchers forced rats to choose between waiting for a particular reward, or moving onto the next reward that may come with an even longer wait. This is exactly the type of situation we might expect rats to feel regretful about, but are they smart enough to feel such a complex emotion?

Continue reading →