December 4, 2009
For the last day, ScienceBlogs has been teasing some big news on Twitter. Perhaps we were all Belle de Jour in disguise? Maybe we would rip off our masks to reveal the mainstream media lurking underneath? Maybe we would even, gasp, shock, start blogging about science?
No, it's none of these. The…
December 4, 2009
We're less than a month away from the end of the year (the decade, even). In past years, I've done a review of the year, where I select my favourite posts. But those were more innocent and less productive times. This year, I have written 245 posts and counting and it's now easy to narrow these down…
December 3, 2009
In the forests of Germany live large numbers of blackcaps, a small species of songbird. They all look very similar, but they actually belong to two genetically distinct groups that are becoming more disparate with time. For the moment, the best way to tell them apart is to wait for winter. As the…
December 2, 2009
If I say the phrases 'anti-ageing' and 'nutritional balance' to you, you'd probably think of the pages of quack websites selling untested supplements than the pages of Nature. And yet this week's issue has a study that actually looks at these issues with scientific rigour. It shows that, at least…
December 1, 2009
Oscar Wilde once said, "One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything, except a good reputation." All well and witty, but for those of us who aren't Victorian cads, reputation matters. It's the bedrock that our social lives are built upon and people go to great lengths…
November 30, 2009
For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and…
November 30, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is the most common developmental disorder in children, affecting anywhere between 3-5% of the world's school-going population. As the name suggests, kids with ADHD are…
November 28, 2009
Ah, penguins. You just can't help but smile. These animals are found on Boulders Beach near Cape Town, where they come so close to the erected walkways that you could potentially reach out and grab one (if the mood took you and you were an idiot).
The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is part…
November 27, 2009
The hammerhead shark's head is one of the strangest in the animal world. The flattened hammer, known as a 'cephalofoil', looks plain bizarre on the face of an otherwise streamlined fish, and its purpose is still the subject of debate. Is it an organic metal detector that allows the shark to sweep…
November 26, 2009
I have now written 600 posts for this blog (give or take a few - I think the "hearing with skin" story was 601).
The next lot of 100 posts will start tomorrow but for the moment, a brief interlude and over to you. Say whatever you'd like - about this blog, about science, about journalism, about…
November 25, 2009
What part of the body do you listen with? The ear is the obvious answer, but it's only part of the story - your skin is also involved. When we listen to someone else speaking, our brain combines the sounds that our ears pick up with the sight of the speaker's lips and face, and subtle changes in…
November 25, 2009
The role of Velociraptor's infamous claw has received much attention from scientists ever since they clicked their way across a movie kitchen. In comparison, the formidable claws of living raptors (birds of prey) have received little attention. Eagles, hawks, falcons and owls are some of the most…
November 24, 2009
For the pipefish (and their relatives, seahorses and sea dragons), it's the males who get pregnant. After a male fertilises the female's eggs, he takes them up into a special brood pouch and shelters them until the babies hatch from his pot-bellied stomach several weeks later. He may seem like a…
November 23, 2009
Many thanks to the kind folks at PCMag for including me on their list of Top 50 blogs of 2009. However, they appear to have made a teensy little typo, where they've misspelled my name as "Patrick Jordan". Easy enough a mistake, I guess - at least the letters D, O and N are shared...
November 23, 2009
In the early days of the last US elections, Hillary Clinton's campaign was accused of deliberately darkening Barack Obama's skin in a TV ad. The implication was that by highlighting Obama's "blackness", Clinton's camp was trying to exploit negative associations that voters might have with darker…
November 22, 2009
Of all of South Africa's species of antelope, the kudu is my favourite, mainly because of those elegantly spiralling horns. They adorn the logo of the national parks and several street signs (which promise kudus majestically leaping out across highways, but seldom deliver). And they're pretty…
November 21, 2009
Hardly a natural history documentary goes by without some mention of leafcutter ants. So overexposed are these critters that I strongly suspect they're holding David Attenborough's relatives to ransom somewhere. But there is good reason for their fame - these charismatic insects are incredibly…
November 20, 2009
In my final year of university, with exam deadlines looming and time increasingly fleeting, I considered recording some of my notes and playing them over while I was asleep. The concept of effectively gaining 6 extra hours of revision was appealing, but the idea didn't stick - it took too long to…
November 19, 2009
Around 15,000 years ago, North American was home to a wide menagerie of giant mammals - mammoths and mastodons, giant ground sloths, camels, short-faced bears, American lions, dire wolves, and more. But by 10,000 years ago, these "megafauna" had been wiped out. Thirty-four entire genera went…
November 18, 2009
News journalism relies on a tried-and-tested model of inverted storytelling. Contrary to the introduction-middle-end style of writing that pervades school essays and scientific papers, most news stories shove all the key facts into the first paragraphs, leaving the rest of the prose to present…
November 16, 2009
At first glance, the African elephant doesn't look like it has much in common with us humans. We support around 70-80 kg of weight on two legs, while it carries around four to six tonnes on four. We grasp objects with opposable thumbs, while it uses its trunk. We need axes and chainsaws to knock…
November 15, 2009
Hi folks,
A couple of housekeeping issues:
ScienceBlogs have developed a set of funky widgets that allow you to share the headlines from your favourite blogs on other websites. You can find the one for Not Exactly Rocket Science here - just click Share, and then Install outside Netvibes.
The…
November 15, 2009
As a species, we hate cheaters. Just last month, I blogged about our innate desire to punish unfair play but it's a sad fact that cheaters are universal. Any attempt to cooperate for a common good creates windows of opportunity for slackers. Even bacteria colonies have their own layabouts. Recently…
November 14, 2009
This is Tyson, a male leopard and one of the last animals we saw on our South African safari. We only took headshots of him but immediately, you can see that he's stockier and more powerfully built than Safari, the female leopard that I showed photos of a few weeks back. Tyson, earning his name,…
November 12, 2009
How would you fancy a holiday to Greece or Thailand? Would you like to buy an iPhone or a new pair of shoes? Would you be keen to accept that enticing job offer? Our lives are riddled with choices that force us to imagine our future state of mind. The decisions we make hinge upon this act of time…
November 11, 2009
Today, a new paper published in Nature adds another chapter to the story of FOXP2, a gene with important roles in speech and language. The FOXP2 story is a fascinating tale that I covered in New Scientist last year. It's one of the pieces I'm proudest of so I'm reprinting it here with kind…
November 10, 2009
The question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded is one of the most enduring in palaeontology. Did they generate their own body heat like today's mammals; was their temperature more influenced by their environment like today's reptiles; or did they use a mixture of both…
November 10, 2009
Will you have that extra chocolate bar when you're worried about your weight? Will you spend that extra hour on the internet when you have other things to do? Will you have that extra drink with an attractive colleague when your partner is waiting at home? Our lives are full of temptations and some…
November 9, 2009
The female case-bearing leaf beetle Neochlamisus platani tries to give her children a head-start in life, but most mothers might not be keen on how she does it - encasing her young in an armoured shell made of her own faeces. After she lays her eggs, she seals each one in a bell-shaped case. When…
November 7, 2009
This is a bull elephant firmly establishing why it is he, and not the lion, who is king of beasts. The elephant's penis is not only massive but prehensile. As we watched in baffled amusement (and the faintest tinge of inadequacy), he used his penis to prop himself up (as in the photo), swat flies…
