Alison Campbell
cut a long story short - BioBlog
Sep 12, 2009 •
I've been marking essays a lot of the day & there are still a fair few waiting for me to give them some attention, so this is going to be brief. But reading through them all has spurred me to...
science can be fun: swearing as a response to pain - BioBlog
Sep 10, 2009 •
I got an e-mail yesterday from a biology teacher (thanks, Ayelet!) with three pdfs & the subject line 'science can be fun after all!'. And the three attached papers definitely showed that :-) 'Excellent blog material,' I thought to myself......
more musings on human pheromones - BioBlog
Sep 08, 2009 •
A comment on my post about human pheromones got me thinking a bit more about the topic :-) Just how much do we know about these signalling chemicals & our ability to detect them?Many animals use scent as a basis...
molecular evolution & possible gene therapy - BioBlog
Sep 06, 2009 •
From time to time I've heard it said (by those in the creationist camp) that evolution has no relevance to modern medicine. Um... hello? antibiotic resistance in bacteria, anyone? And an understanding of evolution can also be put to good...
sherlock holmes & csi - BioBlog
Sep 06, 2009 •
I've just finished reading The Science of Sherlock Holmes, an engaging little book that has the subtitle: from Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the real forensics behind the Great Detective's greatest cases. I'm a sucker for CSI, so when I...
the scent of fear - BioBlog
Sep 04, 2009 •
Like other animals, humans produce pheromones - chemical signals released by one individual that carry information to another. (Unlike other animals, we also spend a lot of time & money modifiying those pheromones: bathing, deodorants, perfumes...) However, while the significance...
wait until you can see the whites of their eyes - BioBlog
Sep 03, 2009 •
I was in a schol bio tutorial the other day & one of the students asked a really intriguing question - one that I hadn't really thought about before. Apparently the class had watched the series Walking with cavemen a few...
the power of the human mind - BioBlog
Sep 01, 2009 •
From one of those intra-office 'junk' e-mails:I cnudolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to rsceearh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in...
hierarchies among our furry friends - BioBlog
Aug 31, 2009 •
September 1. Spring is (officially) sprung, the grass is riz, & the puppy is jumping all over the place. (In quite a different way from Bella - Ben gets up on his hind legs & prances. Must be a poodle...
from the ‘letters to the editor’ – vaccines & ear infections - BioBlog
Aug 29, 2009 •
A couple of days ago our local paper carried a letter that included the bald statement: "vaccines cause ear infections."My first response to that one was: citations, please! That sort of statement is incredibly dangerous, because it's essentially saying, don't...