life
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss biochemist in 1869. It was a brilliant, but not complicated operation: DNA can be extracted from a mixture of any cells, even your own, even at home. The recipe for the…
life
International Polar Bear Day, set up by Polar Bears International, a non-profit organisation, was held on 27 February. The aim of day is to increase awareness in all of us of the challenges that polar bears must face daily due…
life
When you take your dog out for a walk in the public gardens near your home or during a stroll through a park in your city, have you ever asked yourself which species the trees that surround you belong to?…
life
Elephants have eyes that are small in proportion to the size of their heads: it is quite hard to locate their eye sockets at the sides of their skulls. On the contrary, their large nasal cavity right in centre of…
life
Thirty thousand years ago, on the walls of the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave in Southern France, primitive artists painted woolly mammoths, rhinoceroses, lions, horses and bears. Extinct animals that still “live” on the rock and amaze us with the modern style…
life
A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can produce a tornado in Texas. The author of this poetic image was Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist who in 1972 explained how small changes in a system as complex as the atmosphere can…
life
DNA is like an alphabet with only four letters (G, T, A, C) written one after another. A, C, G, T are the initials of the four molecules that encode life: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Four letters that, combined…
life
The United Nations food and agriculture organisation (FAO) celebrates the il World Food Day each year on 16 October, with the aim of raising public awareness of the topics of hunger and malnutrition. The ambitious goal is to succeed in…
life
Homes, dams, artistic installations. We are often inclined to believe that humans are the only animals able to erect buildings and other constructions that modify the environment to their own advantage, but read here and you will find otherwise! From…