The Prince Philip Award and Marsh Prize 2009 « Richmondschoolbiology’s Weblog

I’ve been looking out for this for a while. The Prince Philip Award and Marsh Prize is an annual competition for students aged 19 years or younger. To quote the organisers, ‘The entry should be a written account of original practical work involving some aspect of animal biology, e.g. behaviour, physiology or ecology.’

The purpose is to encourage students to get on with investigating biology rather than just learning it from books, or lab practicals.

Rules and guidlines are here. Come and speak to a member of the biology staff if you would like to enter the competition for guidance on project ideas. It would be a great way to extend your biology learning experience, and should be interesting and fun to do also.

NHS Choices: Behind the Headlines

Exercise linked to fertility November 9, 2009

“Gym workouts ‘can hit pregnancy hopes’,” warned the Daily Express today. The newspaper said that Norwegian study has apparently found that “superwoman workouts” triple the likelihood of fertility problems. This study found that high-frequency, high-intensity exercise was associated with a risk of infertility. However, the study cannot prove that heavy exerc […]

Lorenzo's oil disease gene trial November 9, 2009

The genetic brain disease that was portrayed in the film Lorenzo’s Oil “has been stopped in its tracks by a gene therapy”, according to The Times. This rare but fatal disease, called adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), is caused by a mutation in a gene. Although the disease can be treated by bone marrow transplant, this requires a suitable bone marrow donor to be fo […]

Bad Science

The Nutt Sack Affair (part 493) November 7, 2009

Ben Goldacre, Saturday 7 November 2009, The Guardian Obviously it’s pleasing to see, in the storm of commentary over Professor Nutt’s sacking, that everyone outside of politics now recognises the importance of scientific evidence in devising laws. But a strange reasoning twitch has appeared, in the arguments of politicians and right wing commentators. Scienc […]

Political woo October 30, 2009

Ben Goldacre, Saturday 31 October 2009, The Guardian. Every now and then it’s fun to dip into the world of politics and find out what our lords and masters are saying about science. First we find Brooks Newmark, Conservative MP for Braintree, introducing a bill to reduce the age for cervical cancer screening to 20. The [...]

The Naked Scientists

Tripping over Psychoactive Toads October 13, 2009

For anyone fresh out of frogs and tempted to kiss a toad instead, this article has a word of warning. Although certain species of toads do make hallucinogenic chemicals linked to a lively "trip", many produce a lethal cocktail of cardiotoxic compounds that could turn such a trip into a once in a lifetime experience, en-route to the mortuary. So whi […]

Deconstructing Chomsky - Re-writing the Innate Rules of Grammar October 1, 2009

Noam Chomsky, a rookie professor at MIT, published a ground-breaking book called Syntactic Structures, which set out a theory of Generative Grammar. He suggested that a Universal Grammar (UG) of basic linguistic principles and a Transformational Grammar of rules responsible for putting sentences together was hard wired into all of us. Some don't agree i […]

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