News - Page 9

Flying ant facts

Submit your flying ant sightings! We have had an overwhelming response to our flying ant survey and some very interesting questions about flying ants. So I thought I’d bring them all together, along with a couple of videos of ‘my’ flying ant colonies in Hertfordshire. You can also read about why ants fly on our website or the BBC. If you have any more questions, add a comment below and I will do my best to answer them. Firstly, a question from Mandy from Rochdale: Hi, just read your article about flying ants, I recall an incident about 16 years ago. Went outside to be greeted by a carpet of thousands upon thousands of dead and dying flying ants covering the garden. Is this a normal phenomenon or would it have been something toxic they flew into, It has always puzzled me. This is a natural event, which many of…

A personal thought on photography, art, biology and science

A guest blog from Dr Wei-Feng Xue, winner of last year’s photography competition “What inspired you to be a biologist?”. Wei-Feng is a Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Kent and uses his flikr photostream to communicate photography. People often ask me, as a child what did I want to do when I grew up. “Have you always wanted to be a bio-scientist?” they ask. Perhaps it surprises some when my answer is “no”! As much as I wanted to become a scientist, I was also equally excited about becoming a visual artist or a designer. I spent a lot of time on painting, crafting, drawing, photographing and designing, but science eventually won the career path “tug-of-war”. In a blink of an eye it feels, I had my degree in science, completed a postdoc in a biosciences lab, and more recently started an academic position in a…

Voice of the Future 2012

Earlier this month 120 young people masqueraded as members of the House of Commons Science and Technology committee. We were given the unique opportunity to quiz a stellar (in Parliamentary terms) line up on the future of science in Britain. The signs that we were being taken seriously were good; on a day when his other duties included presiding over Prime Ministers Questions, the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, gave an enthusiastic introduction. The first witnesses before the committee were science and universities minister David Willetts and one of the new departmental chief scientific advisors, Prof John Perkins. It was brave of David Willetts to defend NHS homeopathic remedies in front of such a potentially partisan crowd. However his justification, that homeopaths can vote, is one that any politician is sure to understand. It was also gratifying to hear the minister responsible for science…