The rat race isn’t too harsh after all. Turns out the distress shown by a trapped rat will encourage another rat to spring the trap and free the rodent. New Scientist Magazine reports Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal and Peggy Mason at the University of Chicago housed 60 rats in pairs. Two weeks later, one of each [...]
Archive for Favourites
Oct
16
Mosquitoes harmonize to have sex
Producing an annoying sound may seem like an unlikely way to attract a mate. But male and female mosquitoes buzz at each other to signal their interest, which sometimes leads to a harmonic duet (Click here to see them action). As New Scientist reports – to investigate why mosquitoes would bother harmonising Lauren Cator and [...]
Aug
4
Treating sewage like a rock star
New Scientist Reports While revellers danced to Pulp, Coldplay and Kanye West this past weekend at the annual Splendour in the Grass festival in north Queensland, Australia, it’s unlikely that many had sewage systems top of mind. Yet whether or not they realised it, the infrastructure sorting their slurry is one of the greenest music [...]
Jun
18
Chinese Medicine brings promising treatment where the West failed
New Scientist reports A hooked herb, root extract and a dash of bark – it may sound like a witches’ brew, but these compounds could provide treatments for diseases that have so far foiled western doctors, such as Parkinson’s and irritable bowel syndrome. For over 2000 years Chinese doctors have treated “the shakes” – now [...]
Nov
26
See the world like Geordi La Forge
New Scientist reports: What might your surroundings look like with a bionic eye? New simulations from Australia’s National ICT Centre for Excellence (NICTA) are recreating what patients can expect to see with the next two generations of their device. The microchip, being developed by Bionic Vision Australia in collaboration with the University of New South [...]
May
7
Paying lip service: do our lips get addicted to lip balm?
According to chapping lip legend if you put lip balm, lip gloss, or other popular lip moistening phenomena on your lips all the time then your lips will eventually forget how to stay moist and you will become reliant on external balms to keep your lips moist. This never made much sense to me. My [...]
Apr
13
Do you need to wash your hands after you go to the toilet?
Don’t steal the cookies from the cookie jar, and wash your hands after you go to the toilet were the staples of my childhood education. And I learned them long before I learned how to read and write. But what if someone told you that sometimes after you’ve gone to the toilet you shouldn’t wash [...]
Mar
2
Fighting Farts with Fire
A good friend saw matches in my bag and asked, “Do you smoke Wendy?” “No,” I replied sheepishly, not wanting to reveal the true purpose of the matches. He looked at me quizzically. There was silence. I eventually spoke, “If you light a match it takes away the smell from a fart.” There was even [...]