How the search on your window monitors global biodiversity outside the window

Sitting in your room, typing wikipedia.org/wiki/…/, you are actually helping scientists to monitor species outside the window.  Recently in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, the University of Oxford, the University of Birmingham and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev collectively published their investigation on how Wikipedia pageview records correlates to seasonal patterns in nature. We had…

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The Big Freeze: scientists obstructed by the US government shutdown

Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images By Abigail Pavey Temperatures plummet across North America but the United States federal government has been suffering from a more chilling type of freeze – federal paralysis. In pursuit of his wall, President Donald Trump started the longest government shutdown in modern US history and as a result, science across…

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The Genetic Lottery: Sickle Cell Anaemia and Me

by Tamilore Awosile, Year 13, The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, Hertfordshire. I was born with sickle cell anaemia, a genetically inherited blood disorder which affects approximately 4.4 million people worldwide. In the UK, it is particularly prevalent in people of African or Caribbean heritage. Sickle cell is caused by a mutation in the DNA of…

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The Point of Pencils?

by Ashley Kabue, Year 12, Bablake School, West Midlands. Often viewed as a mundane writing utensil used primarily by young children and artists, pencils are a highly underappreciated tool. For hundreds of years, they have enabled students and scientists alike to record discoveries, quickly note their observations, and most importantly, erase their mistakes. However, they…

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Google Maps and the Atomic Clock

by Emily Pentil, Year 11, Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, Buckinghamshire. In 1957, one second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium atom. Physics so esoteric seems unlikely to feature in an essay about the science of everyday life. But the idea of…

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How Science is Involved Even in the Most Basic Products of Everyday Life

by Diyaco Shwany, Year 11, King Ecgbert School, Sheffield. Many people around the world do not know the significance, impacts and importance of science in everyday life. Almost every product we use in our life is developed through the knowledge of scientific discovery that even includes some of the foods we eat. Let’s take a…

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