Andrew Purcell Some shocking statistics about the world’s rivers: Every day, 2 million tons of human waste are disposed of...
Features
Andrew Purcell Earlier this month, researchers from New Zealand announced that they had observed wasps lifting up ants and carrying...
Andrew Purcell Given that many Christians will be celebrating Easter this weekend, I thought it would be interesting to use...
Andrew Purcell Forget cat’s eyes on our roads, now it’s all about the otters. Last week, it was announced that...
Northward view at Claife, Lake District National Park. (Andrew Purcell) Last week, the UK government put the Lake District forward...
Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) There is a paradox in nature conservation, that the efforts taken to protect a species from extinction,...
The Taj Mahal, often named the world’s most beautiful building, is under serious threat from subsidence. Signs of stress and...
Science cafés are forums where scientists discuss or debate on topical and thought provoking scientific issues with the public in...
How would you describe a city? A unique maze of people-lined streets? A series of districts linked through things which...
Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) Mantell was a full-time medical doctor, but made some incredible contributions to palaeontology in his spare time....
5. The ultrasound gun The sonic devastator Imagine the sound of fingernails scraping down a blackboard, then amplify it to...
No, it’s not your personality that really matters, and neither is it your looks. The way that you smell is...
For something so small, it’s not shy of a big theory. In fact, the atom and its activity have a...
Science has a long-standing tradition of making more powerful microscopes, detectors and other instruments in its quest for greater understanding....
Hide and seek goes on just about everywhere. It’s a simple case of looking hard enough. Camouflage allows organisms of...
A fish's eye-view of a poultry pen at Mudchute Farm, London shows these free-range chickens happily frolicking in their surroundings....
Andrew Purcell Ever since French entomologists August Magnan and André Sainte-Lague famously declared that bee flight was aerodynamically impossible, a...
Amur (Siberian) Tiger Panthera tigris altaica (Photo by Andrew Purcell) The Chinese Year of the Tiger came to an end...
The startling yellow chemical in this photo is the ferricyanide anion, 3−. Ferricyanide has a colourful history, rising to prominence...
This picture is of a family of penguins living on Magdelena Island, just off the coast of Southern Chile. The...
Andrew Purcell Painted Lady (Cynthia cardui) Almost a third of butterflies in Europe are in decline and one in ten...
Earth-engulfing black holes, continent-crushing asteroids, crop-cremating supernovae. Sounds like science-fiction, or at worst the rant of a lunatic - and...