BioBlog

argh! the dreaded mercury!

Alison Campbell • Nov 21, 2009

One of my commenters asked the following question, & while I answered it quickly in that thread, I thought it might be useful for her (& maybe others) if I found a few references to support what I said.One of... Read More

what’s in the water?

Alison Campbell • Nov 20, 2009

Procrastinating like crazy, I've just come across an interesting post over on Science-Based Medicine. It's about the hazards associated with water births (sometimes promoted as a 'natural' way to deliver a baby...). I've wondered before about the sense of delivering... Read More

speciation in darwin’s finches

Alison Campbell • Nov 19, 2009

This afternoon the daughter sat Level 3 Biology (she seemed to quite like the paper). She said that one of the questions was about Darwin's finches, based on some of the work of Peter & Rosemary Grant, who've been studying... Read More

hummingbirds & the high cost of s*x

Alison Campbell • Nov 18, 2009

One of the nice things about reading books by great science writers is that I just know I'm going to learn lots. I've just got back into Nick Lane's latest book Life Ascending (it's been my lunchtime reading at work &... Read More

a guest post from an olympian

Alison Campbell • Nov 17, 2009

Last week I attended the launch of Science OlympiaNZ, a charitable trust set up as an umbrella group to support New Zealand's various International Science Olympiad programs (& very generously supported by the Todd Foundation). Among the speakers was Max, a member of this... Read More

things that go BANG!

Alison Campbell • Nov 16, 2009

No, this has nothing whatsoever to do with biology... well, that's not quite true - there's an exploding whale included :-)I remember that one year, early in my secondary schooling (yes, a loooong time ago!), there was a rumour that... Read More

topical 1080

Alison Campbell • Nov 14, 2009

A couple of years ago now, we held a Cafe Scientifique with the topic 1080 - friend or foe? Topical then (it drew a large crowd, wtih people from both sides of the debate) & just as topical now. On the... Read More

ten questions about intelligent design

Alison Campbell • Nov 13, 2009

A while ago now I wrote about the '10 questions to ask your biology teacher', promoted by Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute. It seems that - in the US anyway - creationists cdesign proponentsists have moved on: the list... Read More

florence nightingale was a statistician

Alison Campbell • Nov 12, 2009

Just a quick post as I'm away on a panel meeting & my brain is tired - but here's something else from my file of 'things I didn't know': Florence Nightingale was a statistician.Now, I heard all about Florence Nightingale... Read More

lumping, splitting, and the morphological species concept

Alison Campbell • Nov 11, 2009

A couple of weeks ago Marcus Wilson & I were down in Taranaki to run a Scholarship preparation day. During one of my sessions the biology students & I were discussing the concept of 'species'. Most of you are probably familiar... Read More

About BioBlog

BioBlog is the home of Dr Alison Campbell, a science communicator and senior lecturer in biological sciences at the University of Waikato. You'll find a fair bit of biology here and ruminations on science in general.

The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the owners of SciBlogs.co.nz, the Science Media Centre or the Royal Society of New Zealand.

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