On Monday America’s oldest oak tree – located in a New Jersey Presbyterian churchyard – was felled, bringing an end to a life that had spanned 600 years. Yes, it hadn’t reached the age of […]
From Cove to Captivity: Taiji’s deadly dolphin secret
Today, on National Dolphin Day, we devote some time to celebrate this intelligent and beautiful mammal. We also celebrate that the once glamorous marine animal performance industry has taken a serious hit in the last […]
IPA And All That – A Memorable History Of Alcohol Part 1
Humanity has always had a drinking problem. From our hunter-gatherer days, to when we settled down to farm and onto the modern day where we produce alcoholic drinks in industrial quantities; consumption of alcohol has […]
Good Grief, it’s a new coral reef
A 3,600-square mile coral reef ecosystem has been discovered beneath the murky waters of the Amazon river’s mouth and is now known as one of the greatest reef systems in the world! This 600-mile-long reef […]
Losing a language – a war of attrition
Linguists describe the languages we’ve learnt from birth, and throughout our teenage years, as our native language, native tongue or mother tongue. You have probably heard these expressions before, however in linguistics – the study […]
What’s new in science this week?
Computer Operating system and short movie stored on DNA: Scientists at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science have shown that it’s possible to use an algorithm, normally designed for streaming videos on mobile […]
Sharks Are Friends, Not Food
Nowadays, sharks tend to get pretty bad press in the media; they are portrayed as man-eaters and a threat to humans. But there are over 500 species of shark in the world, 97% of which […]
Knowledge Bytes: Running out of time
If you’re a computer science student or find computer systems interesting, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Unix time – this being the time keeping method used by multiple operating systems to describe the […]
The Orca-stration of Beached Whales
The news in the natural world last week was of 2 large “super-pods” of whales becoming beached in New Zealand. While over 200 pilot whales retook to the sea under their own steam, joining the […]
The Alternative Science Digest
Normally this space is reserved for the weekly digest, updating you on what’s new in science. However, this week we thought we’d reserve the column space for a slightly different meaning to the word digest… […]
The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Rise of the Fall Army Worm
A growing global population will undoubtedly increase the stress on finite resources, non-more so than with food availability. This looks set to be exacerbated with the rapid colonisation of Southern Africa by a new species […]
Britain in a Flap: Bird Flu’s back
We all remember the pandemic known as bird flu which took place in Britain about 10 years ago, but what has happened to it since? Has it simply just vanished off the face of the […]