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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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October 31, 2009
Category: Animals
Having poor unfit young is still better than having no young at all and if an animal's options are limited, siring a generation of hybrids may be a last resort. The plains spadefoot toad uses just this strategy in times of need.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 30, 2009
Category: Evolution
The head sizes of tiger snakes on Australia's islands provide support for an often-neglected concept in evolution called genetic assimilation.
Posted by Ed Yong at 9:34 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2009
Category: Evolution
The short-tailed shrew and Mexican beaded lizard have independently evolved venom proteins through similar structural modifications from a common ancestor.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 27, 2009
Category: Sex and reproduction
The short-nosed fruit bat is the only animal apart from humans that regularly engages in fellatio. For every second that the female licks the male's penis during copulation, they get an extra six seconds of sex.
Posted by Ed Yong at 7:56 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Spiders
Evarcha culicivora is an indirect vampire, a spider that drinks mammalian blood by preying on female mosquitoes that have previously fed off humans.
Posted by Ed Yong at 8:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 26, 2009
Category: Animals
This chicken disease called BCO has human origins. It's caused by a strain of Staphylococcus aureus that jumped from humans to chickens in Poland, around 38 ago. It has since gone global.
Posted by Ed Yong at 6:13 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2009
Category: Animal behaviour
The mantis shrimp has the most sophisticated eyes in nature. They contain a technology that's very similar to that found in CD and DVD players, but completely outclasses our man-made efforts.
Posted by Ed Yong at 2:00 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 24, 2009
What would an extreme close-up of your sandwich filling look like? What about your hair? The cluster of dust in the corner of your living room? The grain of pollen stuck to your coat? Scientists, of course, have ways of...
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:44 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animal behaviour
The bluestriped fangblenny can change colours to mimic different fish, in order to bite unsuspecting individuals in search of a cleaner wrasse, or to hide in a shoal
Posted by Ed Yong at 10:54 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 23, 2009
Category: Animals
Two separate populations of chimps extract honey from holes using different tools, despite having similar genetics and environments, and the same task.
Posted by Ed Yong at 8:05 AM • 4 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
