Category Archives: Science

Exercise, Health, Reviews, Science

Research: Importance Of Exercise & Movement For Brain Function & Health

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But the connection between movement and the brain goes deeper than you might think. A revolutionary new understanding of the mind-body connection is revealing how our thoughts and emotions don’t just happen inside our heads, and that the way we move has a profound influence on how our minds operate. This opens up the possibility of using our bodies as tools to change the way we think and feel.

Evidence is starting to stack up that this is indeed the case, and it isn’t all about doing more exercise. In my new book, Move! The new science of body over mind, I explore emerging research in evolutionary biology, physiology, neuroscience and cell biology to find out which body movements affect the mind and why.

Whatever it is that you want from your mind – more creativity, improved resilience or higher self-esteem – the evidence shows that there is a way of moving the body that can help. Here is my pick of the best ways to use your body to achieve a healthier, better-functioning mind.

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Podcasts, Reviews, Science

Science Podcast: Snow-Covered ‘Zombie Fires’, Flashy Plant Research

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Smouldering fires lay dormant before bursting back into flame in spring.

In this episode:



00:56 The mysterious overwintering forest fires

Researchers have shown that fires can smoulder under snow in frozen northern forests before flaring up the following spring. Understanding how these so-called ‘zombie’ fires start and spread is vital in the fight against climate change.

Research Article: Scholten et al.

07:39 Research Highlights

Aesthetic bias means pretty plants receive the most research attention, and ancient tooth gunk reveals the evolution of the mouth microbiome.

Research Highlight: Flashy plants draw outsize share of scientists’ attention

Research Highlight: Microbes in Neanderthals’ mouths reveal their carb-laden diet

10:04 Briefing Chat

We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, Voyager 1 detects a faint interstellar ‘hum’, and a trove of Neanderthal bones found in an Italian cave.

Reuters: Faraway NASA probe detects the eerie hum of interstellar space

The Guardian: Remains of nine Neanderthals found in cave south of Rome

Video: Hawaii’s surprise volcanic eruption: Lessons from Kilauea 2018

Evolution, Reviews, Science, Videos

Science: Miocene Apes And Human Evolution (Video)

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More than ten million years ago, the world was brimming with a wide variety of apes. Scientists studying the ones that are still alive today can learn a lot about human evolution—but they miss out on many clues that can only be found from the apes that went extinct. Watch to learn how fossil apes have strengthened ideas about how humans evolved, and what steps we can take to learn even more about our ancient ancestors. Read the review: https://scim.ag/3hw5PVx

Reviews, Science, Space, Technology, Videos

Mars Missions: The China And U.S. ‘Battle Of Rovers’

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The U.S. and China are locked in a fierce battle in the race for Mars. China’s Zhurong rover is circling Mars as the country attempts to land a spacecraft on the red planet for the first time, just months after NASA landed its Perseverance rover. Photos: NASA; CCTV

Podcasts, Reviews, Science

Science: Stone Age Burial Site In Kenya, Metal-Free Rechargeable Batteries

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The earliest evidence of deliberate human burial in Africa, and a metal-free rechargeable battery.

In this episode:

00:44 Human burial practices in Stone Age Africa

The discovery of the burial site of a young child in a Kenyan cave dated to around 78 thousand years ago sheds new light on how Stone Age populations treated their dead.

Research Article: Martinón-Torres et al.

News and Views: A child’s grave is the earliest known burial site in Africa

09:15 Research Highlights

How warming seas led to a record low in Northwestern Pacific typhoons, and the Arctic bird that maintains a circadian rhythm despite 24 hour sunlight.

Research Highlight: Warming seas brought an eerie calm to a stormy region

Research Highlight: The world’s northernmost bird is a clock-watcher

11:35 A metal-free rechargeable battery

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised portable electronics, but there are significant issues surrounding their recyclability and the mining of the metals within them. To address these problems, a team of researchers have developed a metal-free rechargeable battery that breaks down to its component parts on demand.

Research Article: Nguyen et al.

Computers, Reviews, Science, Technology, Videos

Science: Rise Of ‘Exascale Supercomputers’ (Video)

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The next generation of computing is on the horizon, and several new machines may just smash all the records…with two nations neck and neck in a race to get there first.

The ENIAC was capable of about 400 FLOPS. FLOPS stands for floating-point operations per second, which basically tells us how many calculations the computer can do per second. This makes measuring FLOPS a way of calculating computing power. So, the ENIAC was sitting at 400 FLOPS in 1945, and in the ten years it was operational, it may have performed more calculations than all of humanity had up until that point in time—that was the kind of leap digital computing gave us. From that 400 FLOPS we upgraded to 10,000 FLOPS, and then a million, a billion, a trillion, a quadrillion FLOPS. That’s petascale computing, and that’s the level of today’s most powerful supercomputers. But what’s coming next is exascale computing. That’s zeroes. 1 quintillion operations per second. Exascale computers will be a thousand times better performing than the petascale machines we have now. Or, to put it another way, if you wanted to do the same number of calculations that an exascale computer can do in ONE second…you’d be doing math for over 31 billion years.