You may have noticed that I get a bit grumpy when you openly yawn at me in class. It has been happening a lot in the last few days and the yawning towards the end of the HM’s speech on Wednesday morning was of almost epidemic proportions. In part, I don’t like you yawning at me because it feeds …
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Category:Biology
Rise Of The Retrovirals…
I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes this evening, which had been recommended (and lent) to me by JHB. He is very kind with such things, even though it sometimes takes me several years to return a DVD. I expect most of you have seen it and marvelled at the effects that seamlessly integrate …
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Mozart…
I have heard it said that the music of Mozart has a uniquely helpful effect upon the brain; that it changes the brain in ways that no other music can. Indeed, you can buy specially selected collections of Mozart pieces on CD to play to yourself to improve your performance in tests or to increase …
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Ragondin…
As you probably know, because I go on about it quite a lot, I have a lake at my house in France. It’s probably more of a pond than a lake but let’s not quibble. It is beautiful, but overly weedy and plagued by large rodents called coypu (in English) or ragondin (in French). They are a …
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Shallow Grave…
This article was written by Eden & Joshua (post scholarship success). ‘It’s official. The only thing we can be sure of in life is tax.’ Immortality has been on the minds of humans since the beginning of history, with one of the first books, written in about the 22nd Century BC: ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’, …
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Chimera…
This article was written by William & Akira A chimera is an animal which has more than one group of different cells which came from different zygotes, but if the different cells did come from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism. Chimera can often breed, but the fertility and type of offspring depends …
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Taupes Répulsif…
The only thing that spoils the pristine garden view from my front door is the regular appearance of great piles of rich dark soil on top of the newly mown grass. C’est la taupe! Despite having, literally, thousands of acres of farmland around my garden in which to create their havoc, the local mole population …
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Synthetic Organism…
I was asked today about Craig Venter’s momentous achievement in producing the first synthetic organism. My pupil had been reading the papers and was alarmed by what he had read. I suspect he had been reading the Daily Mail but I may be doing him a disservice. (The Mail’s more factual article is much better.) …
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Cold Blooded Beast…
My garden is alive with fast moving and agile lizards. The species is called the wall lizard or Podarcis muralis. They hunt in the flower beds and many seem to live in a network of tunnels beneath my patio tiles. I have seen them catch flying ants but their staple diet seems to be insect …
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Autumnwatch
This evening I saw some of Autumnwatch on the BBC. This is not my natural territory; too much rescuing foxes and squirrels for my liking. But something seems to have changed. Is there a whiff of real science here? Are they being a little more pragmatic and a little less sentimental? It certainly seems so. I …
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