Being back in France offers the opportunity to play a little Farming Simulator. Action packed adventure! It is like GTA crossed with the Wurzels – not that you would know what either of those are… To maximise the yield in each field you have to apply fertiliser in the game. There are two ways to …
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Author:SFScience
Retired Schoolmaster living in Wiltshire and Vendee France
Baby Numbats Are Cute…
Numbats are insectivorous marsupials from Western Australia. They are an endangered species. Marsupials are mammals, but unlike most other mammals they carry their young in a pouch during the early stages of development. Marsupials are only found in Australia and South America. Australia and South America were joined together into a super-continent called Gondwanaland until …
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Onions In Socks…
Another bit of top health advice below from Health Hacks – a group on Facebook. Needless to say there is plenty to unpick. . “This unusual method will literally heal you in your sleep.” It will clean your blood. Onions contain phosphoric acid which is absorbed into the foot and has a cleansing effect on …
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Vitamin C…
Vitamin C is a simple organic molecule called ascorbic acid (also known as E300). Like other vitamins it is a chemical needed in tiny amount by the body in our diet. Other animals (like all carnivorous mammals) can manufacture it within their body. An enzyme produced in liver cells can convert simple sugars into ascorbic …
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Sulphur Cycle…
David Bellamy was one of the great science communicators of my youth. I think he started as a TV expert on gardens but eventually branched out into more general science. I enjoyed his series, “Bellamy Rides Again” from the early 1990s and I used to show this episode, on sulphur, to the boys at Ludgrove. …
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Symposium…
My neighbouring village, Foussais Payré, has just held its fifth annual Symposium de Sculpture à la Tronçonneuse. I thought that the standard was the highest yet and I much enjoyed seeing the sculptors in action and admiring some of their finished items. One of the organisers has produced this nice video, which is also on the …
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Apophenia…
Palaeolithic man, stone tool bearing, social, hunter gatherers from between 2 million to 20 thousand years ago learned to spot patterns in the world about them. They could recognise the changes in the season; they knew when plants would bear fruit; the migratory patterns of their prey became markers for their hunting expeditions; and subtle …
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Vaccination…
When I Googled ‘vaccination’ to do a little research before writing this post I was surprised that my top three options were Wikipedia (of course), the NHS (sensibly) and vaccination.co.uk (a site that is sceptical of the efficacy of vaccination). I would have expected criticism of one of the medical marvels of the modern world to …
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Antibiotics…
Bacteria are single-celled organisms, called prokaryotes because they have no nucleus, as opposed to eukaryotic cells which do have a nucleus. They were probably amongst the first living things to evolve on Earth and can now be found in almost every possible planetary niche from hot springs to radioactive waste. Some bacteria can photosynthesise, others …
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Sun Shining…
The sun is shining in France. It has now done so for a couple of days and it is, slowly, becoming warmer. This appears to have encouraged many of the creatures in my garden to mate. I took the following three pictures over a period of five minutes whilst sitting outside. The flies seemed unconcerned by my …
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