Guest Work

Tattoo: The Marriage of Ink and Skin

Jean Balchin • Jan 12, 2018

• counterculture,
• Polynesia,
• rebellion,
• ta moko,
• tattoo

After a particularly rebellious morning involving  blue hair dye, a brand new nose piercing and the purchase of a pair of black leather platform boots, I found myself in the parlour of rather dingy tattoo studio. Flicking through pages of garishly coloured rose and skull designs, the mix of exhilaration and shame within my stomach soon proved too overwhelming, and … Read More

Super-black feathers can absorb virtually every photon of light that hits them

Guest Work • Jan 12, 2018

• birds of paradise,
• colours,
• courtship,
• feathers,
• optics,
• plumage,
• vantablack

Dakota McCoy, Harvard University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. What do birds and aerospace engineers have in common? Both have invented incredibly dark, “super-black” surfaces that absorb almost every last bit of light that strikes them. Of course scientists worked intentionally to devise these materials. It’s evolution that brought this amazing trait … Read More

No Pain, No Gain: A History of Beauty Practices throughout the Ages

Jean Balchin • Jan 12, 2018

• Anaphylaxis,
• arsenic,
• beauty,
• bee venom,
• Botox,
• foot binding,
• lead powder,
• stem cell research,
• youth

It wasn’t until I felt the sharp sting of lemon juice trickling down into my eye made me realise I had made a terrible mistake. Inelegantly slumped over the bathroom sink, I squinted through my tears at the woebegone girl in the mirror and vowed never to bleach my freckles again. Although only twelve years old, I … Read More

Secrets, Spilled Soup and Schadenfreude

Jean Balchin • Jan 11, 2018

• compassion,
• envy,
• jealousy,
• Leon Festinger,
• Martin Shkreli,
• politics,
• Princeton University,
• Psychology,
• schadenfreude,
• social comparison theory,
• Sport

Imagine, if you will, a cold, blustery day in the city. With the wind howling and the rain coming down in horizontal sheets, the interior of the bus seems positively luxurious. From your vantage point on the plush red seats, you watch as a bedraggled young man runs towards the bus stop, arms flailing and suitcase flying. Just as he … Read More

Young doctors struggle to learn robotic surgery – so they are practicing in the shadows

Guest Work • Jan 11, 2018

• da Vinci,
• open surgery,
• operating,
• procedure,
• robotic surgery,
• robotics,
• Simulation,
• Surgery

Matt Beane, University of California, Santa Barbara.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Artificial intelligence and robotics spell massive changes to the world of work. These technologies can automate new tasks, and we are making more of them, faster, better and cheaper than ever before. Surgery was early to the robotics … Read More

Science Tank | Schrodinger’s cat & the double slit experiment

Guest Work • Jan 11, 2018

• cat,
• Einstein,
• interference patterns,
• light,
• particle,
• physics,
• Schrodinger,
• thomas young,
• wave

In 1935, an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrödinger published his “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment to explain superposition (a quantum mechanics principle stating that something exists in all possible states until it is directly observed or measured, at which point it exists only in one of its possible states). Erwin Schrödinger, staring intently at you. Wikimedia Commons. The thought … Read More

Sleepwalking, Sex, and Murder: Part Three

Jean Balchin • Jan 10, 2018

• homicide,
• insomnia,
• Murder,
• NREM,
• rem,
• sex,
• sleep,
• sleepwalking,
• subcortal

Parts One and Two can be read here… On a warm summer evening in July 2008, retiree Brian Thomas and his wife Christine sat their campervan, watching the sun sink into the sea. The couple spent their retirement watching rugby together and traveling the countryside. After heading to bed, Brian and Christine were awoken at … Read More

Novelty in science – real necessity or distracting obsession?

Guest Work • Jan 10, 2018

• eLife,
• Medicine,
• novelty,
• publications,
• research

Jalees Rehman, University of Illinois at Chicago This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. In a recent survey of over 1,500 scientists, more than 70 percent of them reported having been unable to reproduce other scientists’ findings at least once. Roughly half of the surveyed scientists ran into problems trying … Read More

Science Tank | Snake Bite

Guest Work • Jan 10, 2018

• poison,
• snake,
• venom,
• viper

The Russell’s viper (Daboia russelii) is a highly venomous Old World viper found throughout Asia, the Indian subcontinent and a great deal of Southeast Asia. The name derives from the Hindi word meaning “the lurker” or “that lies hid”. Other names for the Russell’s viper include Daboia, chain viper, Indian Russell’s viper, common Russell’s viper, chain snake, scissors snake and seven pacer. Read More

Sleepwalking, Sex, and Murder: Part Two

Jean Balchin • Jan 09, 2018

• alcohol,
• Drugs,
• fatigue,
• genetics,
• hynotics,
• insomnia,
• Netflix,
• sleepwalking,
• tiredness

Part One in this Sleepwalking Saga can be read here. The Sleep Centre Thinking I’d benefit from a hands-on experience of sleep studies, I contacted a sleep clinic. According to their website, the clinic staff perform a “wide range of home sleep tests for snoring, sleep apnoea, sleep/wake cycles, restless legs, and other sleep disorders.” … Read More