Imagine being suddenly struck by constant, extreme fatigue that no amount of rest or sleep alleviates. Imagine going from an active, engaged, and healthy life, to having trouble with ordinary daily tasks, being bedridden, living in a feeling of brain fog and body pain, where going out or interacting socially can leave you drained for […]

At some stage most of us will have come across the notion of a placebo (from the Latin, “I shall please”) or its negative incarnation, the nocebo (“I shall harm”). From inert pharmaceuticals through to crystal healing, witchcraft, and curses, the placebo concept is often invoked in a hand-wavy manner when the causes of an effect are not well understood […]

We’ve all been sick at some time – from the annoyance of suffering through a cold, through to life-changing chronic illnesses that some of us must learn to live with. Through our intimate familiarity with such illnesses and their consequences, it’s easy to think that understanding illness would be simple. But as it turns out, […]

When you picture different levels of organisation in the biological world, what is it that springs to mind? For a lot of us it is a picture that probably expands from bottom upwards, something like: molecules –>cells –>tissues –>organs –>organ systems –>organisms. Most of us will have encountered this way of thinking about biological levels […]

With their morphing bodies, colour-changing skin, many suckered arms, and their curious, intelligent behaviour, octopuses are among the strangest and most fascinating of sea-dwellers. A paper published this year caused a recent media frenzy when it announced, among other things, that octopuses might be extraterrestrial in origin. Scientists were quick to respond in the […]

Michael Crichton’s classic 1990 novel Jurassic Park spawned a blockbuster movie franchise of death-defying dinosaur action adventures that continue with this year’s latest release: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. A casual audience of these films could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the science of Ancient DNA is all about reckless scientists resurrecting extinct dinosaurs from ancient mosquitoes trapped […]