Now that it has become painfully clear that we are in the anthropocene era, having changed the face of this planet both in terms of the environment and climate, many of us are trying to make changes to the way we live and consume, by eating green. While many of the changes we make to our lifestyles will be beneficial, it is worth it to look at some others that may not be. …
Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green
Almost exactly 100 years after a flu pandemic occurred in 1918, humanity experienced another one. And for over eighteen months we have been under the influence of covid19. Lockdowns, quarantine, and a shattering global economy have been the results.
But something happened that only science could bring about — we got vaccines, which have given us a ray of light at the end of this very dark tunnel. …
What is a solstice?
As the Earth rotates on an imaginary pole called its axis, we get our daily cycle of night and day. The Earth also moves around the Sun over the course of the year but the axis of rotation of the Earth is not lined up to the axis of its orbit around the Sun. In fact, it is tilted at 23.44°, with respect to the Sun and this tilt is called the eliptic. This means that for half the year, the north side of our planet is tilted toward the Sun and the other half is tilted away, while the…
Who doesn’t love pirates and the stories of their seafaring adventures? We’ve heard of Black Beard, Red Beard and their ilk but I am pretty certain most do not know about famous lady pirates. One of them was Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen of Ireland (c. 1530 — c. 1603). In Irish her name is Gráinne Ní Mháille.
Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland met O’Malley in 1577 and said of her: “A most famous, feminine sea captain… famous for her stoutness of courage… commanding three galleys and 200 fighting men… This was a most notorious woman in all…
What to say about a conflict going on for over seven decades that hasn’t been said already? One that is rife with religious rivalries, manifesting in extremely strong political positions.
These past two weeks violence once has again escalated between Israel and Palestine. Although a truce has finally been agreed on May 21, 2021, the Jewish state of Israel and the primarily Muslim areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that together comprise Palestine, cannot seem to get on with each other at all.
Israel is only one of the two countries actually made in the name of religion…
The Amazon is Earth’s largest tropical rainforest with its own self-sustainaing regional climate and hydrological system. It contains a diversity of forests — from montane to mangroves — across a range of distinct soils and substrates, supported by a biogeochemically-diverse riverine network that drives extensive seasonal rainfall. It has been clear for a while that this whole system is under pressure. Unsustainable developing practices — including deforestation for mining, agriculture and dairy farming, as well as illegal logging activities — have all brought it to an ecological tipping point.
Generally, ecological and climate change research on the Amazon Basin has…
Right, I know this post is going to be the “butt” of a lot of giggles but here goes anyway.
When you look at images of planets in our solar system, they all seem to follow a certain design. The rocky ones are round with a few moons, while the gas giants and the ice giants have rings. But one of them is different. It seems to be tilted on its side, with its rings nearly at right angles to its equator. That planet is Uranus.
Until 1781, we all thought that there were only six planets in our solar…
Everyone knows about the Roman Empire — and why not, they ruled over a large part of the world and immensely influenced western civilisation. But Italy existed before the Romans made it their own and it comprised of a variety of cultures and people.
One of these were the Etruscans — a culture that flourished in Italy between the 9th and 3rd century BCE and formed the most powerful nation in pre-Roman Italy. They deeply influenced the Romans and their influence on present-day western cultures is also now being recognized. …
Humans have always expressed themselves through various forms, starting with pictograms, such as handprints, cave art and pictures that represented animals or plants that they saw around them. How did we get from there, to the plethora of languages, scripts and alphabets that we see around us? Here is the story.
Thousands of years of expression on cave walls, on stones and on shells were followed by word-based writing systems and sound-based syllabic writing systems, which are written symbols that represent syllables that make up words. …
