Now on ScienceBlogs: Trying to understand the Norwegian swine flu mutations
My small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing.
Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer based in London. Not Exactly Rocket Science is his attempt to make the latest scientific discoveries interesting to everyone by beating jargon, confusion and elitism with the stick of good writing. He finds writing about himself in the third person strange and unsettling.
"One of the best sites for in-depth analysis of interesting scientific papers" - The Times
"A consistently illuminating home for long, thoughtful, and thorough explorations of science news" - National Association of Science Writers
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August 31, 2009
Category: Social science
Left-handers were less common in Victorian England. Chris McManus worked this out with the help of old films made at the turn of the 19th century and recently restored. The films show people waving as they moved in and out of Victorian factories.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 30, 2009
Category: Neuroscience
A woman called SM has no personal bubble, no zone of privacy around her where the presence of strangers makes her feel uncomfortable. It's all because of damage to her amygdalae - small parts of her brain involved in processing emotions.
Posted by Ed Yong at 1:00 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 28, 2009
Category: Conservation
Japanese researchers have developed a way of using one species of fish as a surrogate parent for an endangered one by transplanting the sexual equivalent of stem cells. If enough of these cells can be preserved, an extinct species could be resurrected.
Posted by Ed Yong at 10:00 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 26, 2009
Category: Palaeontology
Rackets and bats have sweet spots, where a blow will deliver maximum force on a ball with minimal force on the wrist. Now, palaeontologists have used engineering techniques to study the sweet spots of the bony clubs that adorn the tails of glyptodonts - giant prehistoric armadillos
Posted by Ed Yong at 10:00 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 25, 2009
Category: Psychology
Gravity affects not just our bodies and our behaviours, but our very thoughts. A heavy clipboard can makes issues seem weightier - when holding one volunteers think of situations as more important and they invest more mental effort in dealing with abstract issues.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animals
Colony collapse disorder - the mysterious disappearance of bees - may be due to faults in producing new proteins. This could be due to attacks by multiple viruses, which then leave bees vulnerable to other parasites or environmental toxins.
Posted by Ed Yong at 6:00 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 24, 2009
Category: Neuroscience
Heavy multimedia multi-taskers (who spend more time simultaneously reading, watching TV, using the Internet and so on) are more easily distracted by irrelevant information and, ironically, worse at switching between different tasks
Posted by Ed Yong at 3:00 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 23, 2009
Category: Viruses
Two years ago, scientists showed that a virus called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus or IAPV was strongly linked to the mysterious disappearance of US bees - a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.
Posted by Ed Yong at 4:05 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 21, 2009
Category: Wasps
A bacterium (Hamiltonella defensa) protects aphids from being eaten alive by the larvae of parasitic wasps. But only if the bacteria are themselves infected by a bacteriophage. It's a three-way evolutionary alliance between insect, bacterium, and virus.
Posted by Ed Yong at 10:00 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 20, 2009
Category: Animals
Seven new species of marine worms carry four pairs of "bombs" near their heads - simple, fluid-filled globes that give off an intense light when detached. It's probably a defence to distract predators.
Posted by Ed Yong at 2:00 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Neurophilosophy 11.19.2009
The Island of Doubt 11.20.2009
Greg Laden's Blog 11.20.2009
The World's Fair 11.19.2009
Laelaps 11.20.2009
