BioBlog

Essential oils in the classroom: a rose (or other flowers) would smell as sweet

Alison Campbell • Apr 08, 2019

• essential oils,
• school

A story about essential oils being used in classrooms hit the headlines this week. It described how an Auckland primary school had put diffusers into 20 classrooms, using oil blends that would supposedly “stop the spread of viruses and keep children focused at school.” A parent subsequently used the threat of a legal injunction to stop this practice, at … Read More

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Plants, their predators, and early warning systems

Alison Campbell • Apr 02, 2019

• herbivory,
• insects,
• plant signals,
• plants

People tend to think that plants don’t do much from day to day – certainly when I asked my first-year students at the start of the course, they were far more interested in animals than in plants. Poor plants! But then, to the casual eye, I guess they’re fairly static creatures However, it turns out that their responses to the … Read More

Thoughts on a question about kākāpō

Alison Campbell • Mar 21, 2019

• conservation,
• inbreeding depression,
• kakapo,
• lek breeding,
• scholarship biology

My interest in kākāpō began way back in my honours year at uni: a guest speaker told us that as far as anybody knew, the last remaining birds were a few males, somewhere in Fiordland. I remember feeling that that sounded really sad – those lonely males booming for females who never came. Shortly after that, a relatively healthy population … Read More

A new critical analysis of the Wilyman thesis

Alison Campbell • Mar 06, 2019

• immunisation,
• PhD thesis,
• vaccination,
• Wollongong

A few years back, University of Wollongong student Judy Wilyman received a PhD for a thesis that claimed to offer a “critical analysis of the Australian government’s rationale for its vaccination policy.” Both the thesis, and the processes at Wollongong in relation to PhD study and examination, attracted a considerable amount of scrutiny and criticism (see here … Read More

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No link between MMR vaccination and autism

Alison Campbell • Mar 05, 2019

• autism,
• immunisation,
• measles,
• MMR,
• vaccination,
• Wakefield

One of the myths (and there are a lot of them) continually pushed by those opposed to vaccination, is that “the MMR vaccine causes autism” – often coupled with claims that “there are no studies comparing the health of vaccinated & unvaccinated children”. (That’s another myth, by the way.) The origins of this claim can be laid squarely … Read More

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Measles, and myths in the comments sections

Alison Campbell • Mar 02, 2019

• herd immunity,
• immunisation,
• measles,
• MMR,
• vaccination

Measles is making a come-back on the global stage (Madagascar, the Philippines, Japan, Europe, and the US). And, sadly, this vaccine-preventable disease is popping up again in New Zealand:  most recently in the Waikato, Christchurch, Dunedin, and now Auckland. New Zealand, like the US, hasn’t had ‘home-grown’ cases of measles … Read More

SS4C – school strike 4 climate

Alison Campbell • Feb 28, 2019

• climate change,
• environmetal activism,
• Science

The news that school students from across New Zealand are organising the School Strike for Climate on March 15 has been all over the media lately. See this story, for example, which includes the comment that: Globally, their message is clear. They are sick of waiting for adults to save their world so they are going to do … Read More

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Ardipithecus and bipedal walking

Alison Campbell • Feb 25, 2019

• bipedalism,
• evolution,
• fossils,
• Human,
• walking

The hominid known as “Ardi” (a specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus) was discovered in 1994, at a site near Ethiopia’s Awash River. Once excavated, it turned out that this was – for its age – a remarkably complete specimen: 125 fossilised bones, comprising most of the skull, teeth, hands & feet, pelvis, and the lower sections of the arms & legs.  This … Read More

Smallpox stories & shill accusations

Alison Campbell • Feb 01, 2019

• smallpox,
• vaccination

A couple of days ago Newsroom published an article about smallpox, by Farah Hancock. It’s a very good story that covers the nature of smallpox and the history of efforts to develop a vaccine for this particularly nasty disease. And it’s the first of a science-based series about vaccines. Smallpox is a disease that’s extinct in the wild, with … Read More

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Measles outbreaks and the role of anti-vax misinformation

Alison Campbell • Jan 28, 2019

• anti-vaccination,
• herd immunity,
• measles,
• vaccination

Recently Grant Jacobs discussed a paper which indicates that many people strongly opposed to genetic modification think they are well-informed, but in reality know little about the subject. On current evidence, the same applies to those opposed to vaccination. I originally sat down to write about this piece of nonsense, but it can wait. Instead – NZ readers will probably … Read More

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