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I write about science.  

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PMLive •

Ditch the stereotypes

Have you heard of Linda? She’s 31 years old, single, outspoken, and as a student participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

She is also fictional. Kahneman and Tversky famously used her to illustrate the power of stereotypes.

They asked which is most likely: Linda is a bank teller or Linda is a bank teller and a feminist?

Most people chose the second option. Never mind that there are clearly more bank tellers in the world than feminist bank tellers.

This is the hold that stereotypes have o
Nature •

The microbiota’s guide to weight gain

Eat less, do more exercise — a simple formula for maintaining a healthy weight. Or is it? In the mid-2000s, pioneering work by Jeff Gordon’s laboratory showed that there is more to obesity than that; our bacterial ‘partners’ have a thing or two to say about our fat storage and weight gain.

Our gut contains a dynamic and complex population of microorganisms, which are collectively known as the gut microbiota. Together, these microorganisms have a vast number of genes encoding proteins and enzyme
PMLive •

Better by design

Design is more than pretty colours or pictures. It embodies people's thoughts, needs and motivations, the challenges they face and the solutions that address these issues. Design is in essence the vehicle we use to drive change, whether that's encouraging better health-related behaviours among patients or helping physicians make decisions.

Patients at the centre

So how can we design solutions that drive change? In healthcare, we have to put the patients at the centre of everything we do, askin
The Guardian •

Tech house of the future: take a look around

Grab the keys and get set to unpack your boxes. It’s time to move into the future. But before you cross the threshold and command your robo-butler to get the kettle on, take a moment to stand back and admire this feat of engineering.

First off, traditional clay bricks are out. Future houses are likely to be eco-friendly, eschewing CO²-heavy manufacturing processes. Your home might incorporate building blocks constructed from natural cement churned out by bacteria (1), or be fashioned from fungi
New Scientist •

Musical training may give your brain waves more rhythm

Not a fan of slow jams? Maybe you haven’t had enough training.

When we hear speech, electrical waves in our brain synchronise to the rhythm of the syllables, helping us to understand what’s being said. This happens when we listen to music too, and now we know some brains are better at syncing to the beat than others.

Keith Doelling at New York University and his team recorded the brain waves of musicians and non-musicians while listening to music, and found that both groups synchronised two ty
SciDev.Net •

Humanitarian architects work from the ground up

In the age of skylines, steel and star architects, it is easy to forget that the basic role of architecture is to provide shelter. Housing, when stripped of its ability to represent and impress, remains a basic need. This is particularly important for communities who have lost their homes following disaster, or who live in precarious conditions at the margins of society.

“There is a much wider role for architects and architecture than I had been led to believe both in my undergraduate education
New Scientist •

Is the UN about to recommend decriminalisation of all drugs?

The war on drugs has taken an interesting turn. In a blog post published on Monday, businessman Richard Branson said that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was planning to release a statement at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Malaysia recommending that governments decriminalise all illegal drugs. A long-time advocate of changing drug policies, Branson wrote that he “could not be more delighted” with this apparent development.

The UNODC has since published a st
Nature •

Pathogens and commensals fight it out - Reviews Microbiology

Our gut is colonized by trillions of commensal bacteria, which have many physiological roles, for example in nutrition and immunity. So how do pathogenic enteric bacteria, such as enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) and enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), manage to disrupt this balance and colonize the host? Using a mouse model, Núñez and colleagues reveal that the ability of enteric pathogens to outcompete the gut microbiota is influenced by their expression of virulence genes and by compet