The reason badgers have been culled in the UK is because they can harbour tuberculosis, which they then pass on to cattle… which, being in the human food chain or providing dairy products to it, have to be culled if they’re found to have TB infections. At which point you sort of wonder, well, why … Continue reading
Did you know that Elon Musk is ruining the night sky? Sounds like an overreaction, right? How can he be doing that? Okay, well, he’s not personally doing it, but the SpaceX Starlink network of satellites really is — at least if you’re an astronomer. So, why is this the case, when other satellites don’t … Continue reading
Casting about for a topic to post about this week, I ran across this article about silver-backed chevrotains. They’re a small deer-like species from Vietnam which were feared to be extinct due to their elusiveness — they hadn’t been seen by scientists for around 30 years — but when a group of scientists asked around … Continue reading
Twitter’s been chirping away about some new research on measles! Published in Science, the study looks into why measles causes so much extra disease burden through secondary infections. Previous work has found that measles infection suppresses the immune system, but this effect was thought to resolve fairly quickly after infection, bouncing back within 2-6 weeks. Turns … Continue reading
When I mentioned signing up for my next degree soon, I complained to someone that it’d be time to go back to arguing about the ‘biopsychosocial’ model of mental health. They asked what exactly my problem with it is, and suggested this as a good platform. Here goes! So the biopsychosocial model of mental health … Continue reading
Okay, here’s something I’ve been wondering: does your sense of pain vary based on how hungry you are? Any ideas? — Alex Chan I had no gut instinct on this, so I hit Google and immediately found a mouse study in Cell that suggests the answer may be yes, for some types of pain: there was … Continue reading
Should you, or should you not, feed ducks bread? There’s a photo of a sign going round on Twitter claiming that scaremongering about the dangers of feeding ducks bread is causing mass starvation of ducks due to total lack of food. But in counterpoint, there are often signs warning people not to feed ducks bread … Continue reading
