- 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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- Chris Smith
Beating your head against a hard surface can be a sign of frustration, yet for a woodpecker it’s a fact of life. So why don't nature's headbangers develop brain damage or a permanent migraine?
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- Catherine Zentile
Scientists have brought the world one step closer to the creation of the first artificial organism with the recent announcement of the creation of an artificial genome for the bacterium mycoplasma genitalium. The breakthrough is a major landmark in history, the switch "from reading the genetic code to writing it" but this new synthetic biology could be dangerous: is the world ready for this new technology and will it ever be?
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- Robinson Fulweiler
Climate change has been blamed with altering the environment – from animal migrations to sea level. Now it's also affecting nutrient cycling. Excess nitrogen discharged into estuaries used to be removed by a bacterial process in the sediments. But recent research shows a dramatic change...
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- Helen Carter
There are five million new cases of HIV internationally every year, and the virus is second only to tobacco as the leading cause of death worldwide. But what is HIV, how does it cause disease, what is AIDS, how do anti-AIDS drugs work, and what does HIV mean for Britain?
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- Charlotte Rusby
What do pop-up books and some of the most fundamental molecules of life have in common? Charlotte Rusby enters a world 100 million times smaller than the bookshelf to find out...
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- Alexandra Cheung
We tend to think of parasites as evolutionary cheats, surreptitiously taking advantage of their hosts’ hard work while they sit back and enjoy an easy life. But a closer look reveals that it's not all sun and sangria...
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- Becky Poole
Dementia-prone mice have shown researchers than an old mouse can learn new tricks, given the right environment...
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- Christa Favot
The last time you opened wide, did you ever imagine that you were opening the door to what is essentially home to thousands of bacteria? Christa Favot introduces you to what's really living in your mouth, including plaque bacteria and biofilms.
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