Mary Shelley’s Haber-Bosch Process
With the population ever-growing and resources strained, how will we feed ourselves in the future? This was the foreboding question posed by Dr. Haralampos Miras at the University of Glasgow as he shone a...
Therapeutic pollution: a different kettle of fish
When chemicals spill out into the world around us, we need to know what consequences they will have. In general, an opinion of “what doesn’t harm is fine” holds – both for ecotoxicological tests,...
Henrietta Lacks: An Ordinary Woman with an Extraordinary Story
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st 1920, the ninth child in a poor black family of tobacco farmers in Virginia, USA. At the age of 30, Henrietta developed extremely aggressive cervical cancer. During...
Podcast Episode 5
GISTers Debbie Nicol, Emilie Steinmark, Barry Robertson and Timothy Revell discuss some weird and wonderful science from Glasgow and the wider world. They start by looking at (and playing with) the new Lego Research...
Magpies Don’t Favour Shiny Objects
Magpies like to steal shiny, metallic objects to make their nests, right? That’s how the age-old story goes. Rossini even penned an opera on the subject. The birds, part of the crow family, are...
Quantum Pigeonholes
Here’s a simple idea: You have three pigeons and only two pigeonholes. If you put the pigeons in the pigeonholes you’ll end up with at least one hole that contains two pigeons. Right? Now...
Podcasts Are Back (Pilot 2.0)
The podcasts are back. After silence on the airwaves for over a year, we’ve finally recorded a new podcast. Though many of the voices are new, the theme is the same: science! Join the...
Mind Games
Apps like Lumosity, Memory Trainer or Brainmetrix all promise to provide more or less the same things: scientifically designed games which lead to better memory, increased intelligence, attention span and problem solving abilities, as...
