woodchurch science

…looks almost good enough to eat but it’s 12 years old…karen hanrahan has been using the same McDonald’s hamburger as a prop in her “Healthy Choices for Children” class since 1996 — 12 years! — and it’s hardly aged a day in all that time. read more here…

discovered 13 years ago, and officially added to the periodic table just weeks ago, element 112 finally has a name. it will be called “copernicium”, with the symbol Cp, in honour of the astronomer nicolaus copernicus. read more here.

science GCSE ‘lacking in science’…read bbc article

more than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of a new element, a team of german scientists has been credited with its discovery. you can read about it here. there is some stuff about the last element to be discovered (Ds darmstadtium) in 1994 here.

researchers have found a way of cultivating cells in a doll shape, which can survive for a few days. read more on michael davies’ blog here

making 2bn tonnes of cement globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions – more than the entire aviation industry, so any innovations which will reduce this must be welcomed. british scientists (hooray!) have developed a new type of cement that ‘eats CO2′. you can read all about it here.

we’ve been nominated for the edublogs awards 2008 in the best resource sharing category. please vote for us at this page. but please no vote rigging, and don’t vote in school (they will only accept 1 vote from each ip address). so please vote at home. we came second last year…let’s see if we can go one better this year.

surely no denizen of woodchurchscience could disagree with the notion of celebrating the life and works of charles darwin with a public holiday – unless perhaps you think some other scientist would be more deserving.
if darwin is your man then tell gordon brown by signing this petition on the number 10 website.

charles darwin was a truly remarkable scientist. his work on evolution deserves to be honoured in some way. making his birthday (12th february) a bank holiday would be a simple way of doing this.

more than a quarter of sharks and rays in the north-east atlantic face extinction from overfishing, conservationists warned today. a “red list” report from the international union for conservation of nature (IUCN) found that 26% of all sharks, rays and related species in the regional waters are threatened with extinction. seven per cent are classed as critically endangered, while a fifth are regarded as “near-threatened”.
read more here.

two-thirds of teenagers do not believe science qualifications would help them to have rewarding careers. a poll of 1,000 16- to 18-year-olds found that just over a quarter (28%) saw the sciences as relevant. the study said that students were unaware of the range of career options – including in sectors such as fashion and sport – that studying sciences could open up for them.
many young people have preconceived ideas about science subjects leading solely to laboratory jobs and wearing a white coat, it said. read more about the survey here

the science minister, lord paul drayson, said: “i want to shake this image problem that science has. “i’m sure teenagers would agree that lewis hamilton’s formula one race engineers have an exciting life. we need to make them realise it’s because of what they studied at school.”