Deborah Bloomfield

The UN Biodiversity Conference or COP 15 is currently taking place in Montreal. Its goals are ambitious: to create a shared vision to live in harmony with nature by 2050, to create fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of nature, as well as the safe transport, handling, and labelling of Living Modified […]

Are you procrastinating? I am. I have been delaying writing this article for the last few days even though I knew I had a deadline. I have scrolled through social media, and I have gone down a rabbit hole looking up houses on Rightmove – even though I do not need a new house. I […]

There are a few hitches in the logistics of a Christmas that sees a bearded man swoosh across the globe delivering gifts and coal to naughty and nice children – one of them is the unfortunate fact that reindeer can’t fly. They can, however, float. Reindeer, scientifically known as Rangifer tarandus and more commonly as […]

Do you remember the last holiday season? When you took a ton of family photos and video, but then forgot to backup your computer, and all was lost? Well, this year it will be different. You are going to backup those treasured pics and videos, and score a whole lot more storage in the process. […]

A box containing 15 silver coins from the era when Judea was under the control of the Seleucid Greek Kingdom may provide the first archaeological evidence of events that formed part of the Maccabean Revolt. However, the finding place stirs modern political disputes. The coins were found in the Muraba’at Cave during excavations by the […]

The complexity of our languages is one of the things that distinguishes humans from other animals – but for most of that time, people may not have thought too hard about the structure of speech that evolved organically. Sometime between the 6th and 4th century BCE, the Indian scholar Dakṣiputra Pāṇini wrote down some rules […]

While the animal kingdom has more unique ways of communicating, mostly us humans spend all day prosaically using messaging systems and video calls to get in touch. This Desklab Portable Touchscreen Monitor gives you more space to communicate and saves you money as well by cutting 20% off the price with code WINTER20 at checkout. […]

The UK is now approaching its third Christmas of the COVID pandemic. And this year feels different. There’s little question we’re in a better position compared with 2020 and 2021. In 2020, Christmas plans were significantly curtailed, with a range of restrictions in place across the UK. But winter social mixing that took place before […]

“Very exciting” results have come out of a recent trial of an experimental vaccine that uses messenger-RNA (mRNA) technology to tackle melanoma skin cancer. It’s still early days, but the data is yet another indication of how mRNA vaccines and personalized cancer treatments hold a huge amount of potential.  The vaccine has been developed by […]

Nuclear fusion ignition was achieved for the first time at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) this month. This historic first shows that we can create controlled fusion in the lab that releases more energy than we put in. And while the road to a commercial fusion power plant is long, this […]

How likely are you to play it safe? Choosing an unknown option might be reserved for those with money to burn on the Las Vegas strip – but the mechanisms behind choosing something potentially high risk-high reward is a subject that’s fascinated scientists. Human decision-making is often irrational and can lead to economically poor choices. […]

A large study has found an unexpected link between refusing the COVID-19 vaccine and getting into traffic accidents. The increased risk of getting into a traffic accident among the unvaccinated was on par with the risk faced by people with sleep apnea, according to the study’s authors. The study, published in the American Journal of […]

Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are believed to be one of the most common types of galaxies in the universe. They tend to be active and full of star formation, which makes them appear “blue” because hot young stars shine brightly in ultraviolet light. But some spiral galaxies are “red”, aging passively with not […]

A glimmer of gold made for an exciting finale to a dig in Northamptonshire back in April 2022, when researchers at the MOLA site stumbled across something they weren’t expecting. There among the soil they found a necklace, and it would later reveal that they were dealing with a burial site of international significance. “When […]

A genetic study of cats around the world has helped tell the story of how cats became domesticated by people living in ancient Mesopotamia around 10,000 years ago.  This was a very interesting time in human history, when populations first started shifting from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settlements powered by stable agriculture. This revolutionary […]

Trying to pick up a human brain that hasn’t been preserved in formaldehyde is a bit like attempting to lift a blob of gelatinous goo, new research has revealed. Using a combination of MRI scans and computational modelling, the study authors calculated the fragility of living participants’ brains, and found that they are very squishy […]

Lawmakers in the US have announced a bipartisan bill to ban social media app TikTok. The legislation would block all transactions by social media companies based in, or considered under the influence of, countries deemed to be adversaries. If the bill gets through, any social media companies that are based in countries including China, Russia, […]

Christmas is a time that tries its best to lift the spirits in the bleak mid-winter. We can forget about the constant colds and the desperate dark weather to enjoy festivity, fun, and thoughtfulness. However, some cultures like to remember that this transitional time of year isn’t all jingle bells and mulled wine. Pull back […]

Who doesn’t love the holiday season? With its festive cheer, gifts and merrymaking, and frankly unnecessary amounts of drunken grandma farts, you’d have to be a real Scrooge to resist society’s grand tradition of going just a little bit bonkers for about a week at the end of each calendar year. But as objectively weird […]

Despite their immense size and their communal nature, giraffes aren’t known for being particularly talkative. In fact, they are pretty much silent most of the time. But these gentle giants do make the occasional vocalization, and it’s not what you would expect. Before we dive into the complexities of giraffe vocalization, it’s worth mentioning that […]