- Chris Smith
Simpsons fans will know only too well the opening sequence to the cartoon in which Homer discovers, during his commute, that he’s taken some of his work home with him – in the form of a radioactive fuel rod from the nuclear power plant! Unsurprisingly, the lump of material he subsequently throws out of the car window is glowing an ethereal green colour. But therein lies multiple myths of atomic-powered proportions, because most radioactive substances don’t really glow at all, let alone light up green!
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- Helen Carter
Every day our bodies are assailed by microbes of all descriptions, but for the most part we successfully fend them off. In this article Helen Carter explores the basis of human immunity...
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- Helen Rogers
The European Parliament voted recently to include CO2 emissions from the aviation industry in its carbon trading scheme from 2011, but did they get it wrong by also including the impact of contrail formation and emissions of nitrogen oxides? What would happen, for instance, if Parliament adopted the same methodology for shipping? Helen Rogers explains why it's not all "plane" sailing…
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- Frank Witte
Recent Mars missions have produced compelling evidence for what was once a wet world, where life could well have flourished. Now scientists are about to embark on a mission with the best chances yet of finding it. Touching down near the Martian north pole, the Phoenix lander will begin looking for the chemical hallmarks of life past and present. But what do we already know about our near planetary neighbour? Frank Witte finds out...
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- Beth Ashbridge
Since scientists discovered how DNA behaves like a giant genetic recipe book encoding the entire suite of proteins needed for a cell to function, they've also been looking for a simple way to selectively and simply switch off some of those genes to find out how they work. Now there is such a tool. It's called RNA interference or RNAi and it's recently won the discoverers a Nobel prize. But how does it work and could it also be the medical answer to a host of problem genetic diseases? Beth Ashbridge finds out...
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- Andrew Caines
So what exactly is linguistics? Is it all about tape recorders, tongue twisters and dropped "aitches"? Or is it all adventure, exploration and the search for undiscovered languages among rainforest tribes? Well, it's both, and in this article Andrew Caines tells us more...
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- Chris Smith
The feasibility of a female oestrus amongst humans had been dismissed by the masses. But now a study of tipping amongst lap-dancers has confirmed that oestrus appears to be alive and kicking...
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- Catherine Zentile
The buzz of a bumblebee is one of the quintessential sounds of summer time. But this ‘slender sound’ and ‘faint utterance’ that was so admired by Wordsworth is under threat because bumblebees are in crisis: of the 25 species native to Britain, three have already been declared extinct. But why are they suffering and what can we do to stem the problem...?
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- Catherine Zentile
I.Q. scores have been rising steadily, by about 3 points per decade, ever since they were first administered. This is the Flynn Effect and it means that if we take the average teenager of today with an I.Q. of 100 and project the trend back to the 1900s, the average I.Q. was somewhere between 50 and 70 which usually marks a mental disability! Surely this cannot be correct...?
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- Robinson Fulweiler
Equivalent in land area to 14 Isle of Mans, or Rhode Island State twice over, the Louisiana Wetlands are one of the most important acquatic ecological sites in the world. But now they're disappearing, fast - an area the size of a tennis court slips into the sea every thirteen seconds. But what is this wilderness and what can be done to save it...?
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