Prose and Passion

review of Netymology, by Tom Chatfield Over the last two decades, the world-wide web has rapidly evolved to become the focus of a world-wid...

I somehow managed to miss Neil Shubin's excellent book "Your inner fish" when it came out a few years ago. Now, however, I had...

Not that I've felt the need for brain doping (beyond caffeine) so far, but I've been following the field of cognitive enhancers from...

This week's issue of Current Biology has a special section of food and biology. My contribution is a feature on the gut microbiome and w...

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has banned this ad: according to this report in the Guardian , and I'm having a huge ...

During the preparations for the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Asso...

Why is tumblr like ancient Egypt? How do you recognise if a twitter user is part of a specific tribe? Will edit wars on Wikipedia end in pea...

In the round-up of German pieces published in April we have serious reports on teeth and on artificial enzymes, and not so serious ones on b...

After my recent blog post on DNA double helices that twist the wrong way (inverted helices), a reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) sub...

The Deep Carbon Observatory is an international interdisciplinary project studying the hidden carbon fluxes deep within the earth, along wit...

Scientists are now able to design new enzymes to catalyse reactions for which a natural enzyme doesn't exist. I've rounded up some o...

Moving on from first movement of the Beethoven Duo no. 1 , we're now trying to play the third movement of the same piece, which is actua...