- Guardian Unlimited Science
- 08/11/28 01:45
Letters: It is unfortunate that Richard Dawkins, gave the impression he did not consider of value any information not derived from checking ideas by further observations or experiments...
Letters: It is unfortunate that Richard Dawkins, gave the impression he did not consider of value any information not derived from checking ideas by further observations or experiments...
THURSDAY 27. NOVEMBER 2008
Adam Rutherford: A report on children's poor science knowledge may, in fact, be unscientific, but our future depends on evidence-based methods
Mark Vernon: Rather than looking to pure science for guidance, we should put our faith in old-fashioned good judgment
There has been a "catastrophic slippage" in standards of science taught in schools, leaving children with a superficial understanding of chemistry, biology and physics, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.Declining standards in schools, linked to teachers focusing on test results rather than analytical skills, risks starving the country of vital skills, the RSC said. In a competition run...
The unearthing of a 220m-year-old fossil in China has solved the enduring mystery of how the turtle got its shell.The ancient remains are the only evidence fossil hunters have of a turtle that is midway through evolving a shell, revealing for the first time how the process happened.Fossil hunters uncovered the remains of three remarkably intact adult turtles in Guizhou province last year. Each has...
A scheme to boost fuel economy by reducing viscosity has met with scepticism from academics
The government is encouraging landowners to increase the culling of wild deer where there are high levels of TB, to minimise the risk of the disease spreading further in cattle.Just months after the government ruled out a badger cull in England because it could not "meaningfully contribute" to eradicating the disease on farms, it is encouraging targeted measures against deer which its scientific...
The Aids policies of former president Thabo Mbeki's government were directly responsible for the avoidable deaths of a third of a million people in South Africa, according to research from Harvard University.South Africa has one of the most severe HIV/Aids epidemics in the world. About 5.5 million people, or 18.8% of the adult population, have HIV, according to the UN. In 2005 there were 900...
WEDNESDAY 26. NOVEMBER 2008
The unearthing of three 220m-year-old fossils in China has solved the enduring mystery of how the turtle got its shell.The ancient remains are the first evidence palaeontologists have of a species of turtle that is in the process of evolving a shell, revealing for the first time how it happened.Fossil hunters uncovered the remains of three remarkably intact adults in Guizhou province last year....
They are one of the common creatures in our gardens and, according to naturalist Charles Darwin, one of the most important on earth, yet little is still known about the earthworm. But a new census of England's earthworms aims to give scientists a comprehensive picture of their numbers and health.The survey, led by the Natural History Museum, aims to map out which species of earthworms are present...
Our new schools minister, Sarah McCarthy Fry, thinks that girls might be more interested in science if there were no boys in class and lessons were 'girl friendly' - related to work that appeals to us girlies, like building incubators to save babies' lives. Well think again, minister, because your problem may be that girls in general just aren't that keen on science. I wasn't when I was fifteen,...
In Joseph Wright of Derby's paintings, 18th-century Britons gather to witness scientific wonders. Children stand transfixed or terrified, adults just as rapt, as scientists visually display the marvel of nature. Wright's picture An Experiment On a Bird in the Air Pump portrays a cruel and terrifying experiment; his more benign painting The Orrery shows people contemplating a model of the solar...
Jackie Leach Scully: As the debate over 'choosing' deaf children shows, in so many discussions of ethics and belief today, fantasy takes the place of empiricism
TUESDAY 25. NOVEMBER 2008
Tribal Portraits: Vintage & Contemporary Photographs from the African Continent is at Bernard J Shapero Rare Books until 23 December
The science minister Lord Drayson called today for a major new space facility to be built in Britain in a speech to the European Space Agency (Esa).Government officials are drawing up plans for a space centre that will focus on observing climate change from space and developing robotics for future missions. The facility would be based at Harwell in Oxfordshire.Speaking at the agency's ministerial...
Trash the environment for profit to win! An utterly partial guide to the oil industry, as you 'walk a mile' in a mogul's shoes. Naomi Alderman is pushing this link
Puerto Rican lizards put on elaborate displays of push-ups to grab the attention of others when the forest is noisy, scientists have discovered.Researchers built robotic lizards that mimicked the animals' movements and found that the eye-catching shows made real lizards pay more attention.In the wild, Puerto Rican anole lizards perform push-ups before sending out more complex signals by bobbing...
Watch a robotic lizard attract attention with four-legged press-ups before unfurling its 'dewlaps'
Should cannabis be upgraded from a class C drug to class B?