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The Search For Unintelligent Life

Imagine an alien. If you’ve been influenced by movies and television at all, the creature you’re picturing is probably two-legged, two-armed, bipedal and with a reminiscently human layout – head, eyes and mouth somewhere near the top. And while most of us recognise that this vision of extra-terrestrial life is a bit silly, conversations about life elsewhere in the universe are often still painfully unimaginative.

Guest Blog

Genetically Modified Myths Examined

Genetically modified organisms, especially plants, get a lot of hate. People – even some very environmentally conscious people – seem to fear or hate GM crops. Yet, as someone who is very worried about climate change, very worried about the human-induced mass extinction event that is happening before our eyes, and worried about the livelihoods of farmers and about those people that have so little food they go to bed hungry every night…

Estimating Extinction

12 November, 2014 by

We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, and everyone is in a hurry to tell us about it – we are constantly bombarded by statistics about how many species are threatened, but how do scientists work out which species are threatened and which are not? The recent Living Planet Report tells us that over 50% of wildlife has been lost from Earth since 1970. But what are those estimates based on, and how do you even begin to try and monitor the population statuses of the 9 million or so living species on Earth??

With an estimated 9 million species on Earth today, the task of monitoring and assessing the status of the World’s biodiversity is no small one. Yet if we have any hope of putting a halt to the astonishing loss of species occurring worldwide, we must try to understand what species are threatened and by which human activities.

In this feature article, I summarise recent research into extinction risk and ask the experts their views on estimating extinction during the sixth mass extinction. Includes interviews with Dr Monika Böhm (Institute of Zoology, Indicators and Assessment) and Prof Andy Purvis (Natural History Museum, PREDICTS Project).

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The Ig Nobel Prizes 2014

9 November, 2014 by

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes, celebrating weird and wonderful science that is making a real difference. This year’s winners, announced at the award ceremony in Massachusetts in September, include pork-based cures for nosebleeds, humans dressed as polar bears, toast that looks like Jesus and defecation from cats, dogs and children. Enjoy!

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How the Moon Affects Us

29 October, 2014 by

The idea that the phases of the moon are linked to the human psyche is one of the oldest and most pervasive examples of folk lore and mythology. It is woven into the fabric of our classic literature, poetry and music. Even today, a surprising number of people believe that our deepest emotions and mental states are influenced by the lunar cycle, and there are plenty of police officers, doctors, nurses and prison guards who would swear blind they’ve seen evidence of it in their everyday lives. But is the lunar effect real? How and why does it work? Humans have spent thousands of years discussing the lunar effect in stories and legends, and the last 40 years documenting it in the academic literature. So what’s the verdict? How does the moon affect us?

In it’s simplest form, the Werewolf exemplifies our most primitive understanding of a link between human behaviour and emotion and the moon. It captures our idea that during the full moon, man becomes wild, violent and instinctive, a reversion to a more basal, less civilised version of ourselves. This is probably the most pervasive aspect of the myth, that the moon controls human aggression, impulsivity, violence and mood. But the lunar effect has also been proposed for a range of scenarios so broad it will make your mind boggle. A quick google search will tell you that the moon controls our fertility and reproduction, influences violent crime, suicide and even traffic accidents, affects seizures, blood loss, sleep quality and even our political leanings. All of this begs the question, how and why might such a mechanism exist?

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Parasitic Fish Reveal Insights into Brain Evolution

23 October, 2014 by

What can this squiggling, toothed eel-like creature possible tell us about our own brains? Well, the lamprey, although ugly, occupies a pivotal place in the evolutionary tree. Research on captive lampreys can tell us about the earliest evolution of the vertebrate brain and yield insights that may help to cure and treat neurological disease. A new study published in Nature last month suggests that the human pattern of development in an important region of our brains may have evolved much earlier than we thought, in a creature that looks much like a modern-day lamprey. So perhaps lampreys can tell us more about our brains than you might have thought!

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Couples Sleep In Sync

17 October, 2014 by

Love it or hate it, sharing a bed with someone is the norm for most adults in a relationship, but how well we sleep together can have a profound effect on our mood, our relationships and the rest of our lives. A new study presented at a recent SLEEP conference suggests that sleeping couples sleep better together when the woman is more satisfied.

It has previously been reported that divorced and single people experience more sleep disturbances and generally poorer quality sleep than couples, but it seems that the quality of your relationship might also influence how well you sleep. Research presented at SLEEP 2014, the 28th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, suggests that how well you sleep with your partner may be a reflection of the quality of your relationship. According to lead author Dr Heather Gunn from the University of Pittsburgh, “the sleep of married couples is more in sync on a minute-by-minute basis than the sleep of random individuals”, suggesting that our sleep patterns are influenced not just by where and when we sleep, but with also with whom we sleep.

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The Genetics of Sleep

8 October, 2014 by

Every night’s sleep is different, and how you sleep on any given night is likely to be determined largely by short-term causes – what and when you ate, how much exercise you did today, stress levels, what you watched on TV, whether your partner is snoring – but there are also fundamental, long-term differences between people in their sleep patterns. It is thought these differences are often genetic, and recent research supports this idea, identifying for the first time a gene involved in determining how much sleep we need.

Sleep is a huge part of our lives, and the lives of many animals. Although we still do not fully understand the strange phenomenon that takes up a third of our lives, it is clear that without it we cannot survive. But with a growing number of things keeping us awake – work, tv, friends, sport, buzzfeed, reddit – how much sleep is enough sleep?

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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)!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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