Octopus Snatches Coconut and Runs
This is incredibly cool: underwater video footage of an octopus picking up a coconut shell that has been dropped into the water and running away with it along the seafloor. Well worth watching, equal parts fascinating and hilarious.
DNA Tests Reveal Sushi Fraud
This is awesome and bizarre - some biologists ordered sushi and used DNA barcoding to check the species of the fish, revealing that often the tuna was not what it claimed to be.
Cell Size and Scale
This is a very interesting and well done look at the scale of various cells (both human and bacterial) and molecules (including viruses). It’s really quite incredible to think about.
Boats and Kites and Wind Power, Oh My!
SkySails are essentially kites under electronic control that assist in powering boats. It’s an old article, but I just found it at the office where I’m volunteering, where my job is to sort out all the information they have about environmental issues, including alternative energy. The best part: apparently one of these things almost took out a helicopter!
Six Diseases You Never Knew You Could Catch
New Scientist has a really interesting article about how some diseases, such as diabetes, schizophrenia and OCD, may actually be infectious. This isn’t actually such a strange concept: as the article relates, stomach ulcers were previously believed to be caused by stress and diet, but are now known to be mostly due to bacterial infection by Helicobacter pylori. It’s also not that surprising that some forms of cancer may fall into this category, as the fact that viruses can be responsible for delivering and/or activating oncogenes, which lead to cancer, is also well known.
The Vaccination Debate
This is a really good, really interesting article in Wired about vaccination. That vaccination is a controversial subject at all is bizarre to me, as all the evidence supports it, yet as this article discusses, many parents are opposed to vaccinating their children and thus cause a serious health risk.
All models of the world beyond the reach of our immediate senses are fictions, free inventions of the human mind… Reality is in a very large measure what you want it to be. Still, though, almost everybody wants to know ‘the answer’. The quest for a really real model is what drives theoretical physicists, just as it motivates other folk to study philosophy or to subscribe to a particular religion. I still have this hankering myself, even though the logical part of my mind tells me that the search is fruitless, and that all we can ever hope to find is a self-consistent myth for our times.
~ John Gribbin, ‘Schrodinger’s Kittens and the Search For Reality’
Bad Science is a popular science book by Ben Goldacre, based on the website and newspaper columns of the same name. It criticizes many forms of alternative medicine such as homeopathy and nutritionists, and also the coverage of science and health stories by the media. Along the way it provides some very good explanations of relevant subjects such as the placebo effect, clinical trials and statistics. It’s perfect reading for anyone who wants a better understanding of the big science scare stories that constantly appear in the papers, and I’d highly recommend this book, both for those with a science background and especially for those without. My only minor complaints are the lack of an index (which is pedantic, but something I like in my non-fiction books) and the somewhat arrogant tone that comes across in the writing at times. However, as well as being very informative, the book is also quite humorous, and overall it’s a very entertaining and fascinating book.
