Real Science - news and science teaching resources for schools

Climate change in Antarctica

A fortnight after the birth of his second child, Glasgow University palaeoclimatologist James Bendle waved goodbye to his wife and sons and set sail for the Southern Ocean.

27-Jan-2010

Like an angry dog, a volcano growls before it bites, shaking the ground and getting noisy before erupting. This could help us predict when volcanoes will erupt, says Emily Brodsky, who has been studying pre-eruption earthquakes.

16-Dec-2009

T Rex's little cousin, Tawa hallae

A new dinosaur species, one of the earliest yet discovered, has been found in New Mexico. "When we saw them our jaws dropped," says Sterling Nesbitt. "A lot of these theropods have really hollow bones, so when they get preserved they get really crunched. But these were in almost perfect condition."

10-Dec-2009

Antarctic climate change and environment

A major review of the science of Antarctica has just been published. Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment presents the latest findings, suggests future research, and tackles questions of melting, sea-levels and biodiversity.

1-Dec-2009

Bad newts for builders

Great crested newts are protected by law. So if a builder finds these little amphibians on his land he can't just go ahead and build there. He has to make sure first that the newts are safely moved and found a new home. But how well do the newts do after their translocation? Glasgow University's Debbie McNeill has been investigating.

1-Oct-2009

Clouds won't save us from global warming

One of the biggest uncertainties in the science of climate change is what happens to clouds in a warming world. If we get more of them, they could shield us from the sun so that severe climate change would not happen. The latest research from Amy Clement and colleagues at the University of Miami shows this is a forlorn hope. The clouds are not going to save us.

23-July-2009

Culture causes gender gap in maths, say scientists

Men far outnumber women at the highest level of mathematics. The most common explanation is that more male brains than female brains are born with the talent. Now two professors from the University of Wisconsin, Janet Mertz and Janet Hyde have reviewed the evidence. They find that the gender gap is most likely caused by social and cultural factors, not biology..

1-June-2009

Don't play poker with them

Jackdaws can tell what we are looking at, says behaviour ecologist Auguste von Bayern. Not only do they notice the direction of a human gaze, but they seem to realise what it means. This second step is astonishing for a "bird-brain". Our closest relatives, the apes, and our best friends, the dogs, don't seem to be this aware of the eye's role in visual perception.

2-April-2009

Oily algae

Chemists report the first process to turn algae oil into biodiesel that is "both economical and eco-friendly". This could eventually lead to algae replacing petroleum as a source of fuel, they say.

25-March-2009

Smallest dinosaur

Canadian researchers have found the smallest dinosaur species in North American. Their work helps re-draw the picture of the continent's ecosystem at the height of the dinosaur age 75 million years ago.

16-March-2009

No goldfish

Scientists have found gullies on Mars where water from melting snow and ice flowed 1.25 million years ago. This may well be the closest to the present that liquid water flowed on Mars.

2-March-2009

RoboSalmon

Swimming with wild salmon as they make their last journey upriver to the place of their birth is just one application for a new underwater robot, says Euan McGookin.

14-Dec-2008

Final frontier

Keeping human waste away from drinking water is not glamorous research, admits Bill Sloan - although it can get exciting when you're hunting bugs in the world's wild places.

18-Nov-2008

Force field for Mars craft

A force field can be created that will protect the occupants of a spaceship on the long voyage to Mars, say UK scientists

4-Nov-2008

A rippling yarn

When a team of scientists searching for gravitational waves given off by the Crab Nebula found none at all, they weren't too disappointed, says Glasgow University's Graham Woan. "We would have been ecstatic if we had found them. But we weren't expecting to - and the fact that we didn't tells us a great deal."

30 October 2008

New window on solar energy

Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a better way to get energy from the sun.

10-July-2008

Single but chatty

A primitive single-celled organism has more machinery for signalling to other cells than we do.

7-July-2008

Thumbs-up to Einstein

Extreme star system supports general theory of relativity.

3-July-2008

Bird tree of life redrawn

The biggest ever study of bird genes has redrawn their tree of life - and thrown up a whole lot of surprises.

26-June-2008

Lizards pull a wheelie

Lizards get up on two legs in the same way that bikers do a wheelie. And they do it deliberately, say Australian scientists

13-June-2008

Behind the mask

Scientists have been probing the living brain to find out what is happening when we are aware of some sounds and mask out others - "the cocktail party effect".

9-June-2008

Mountain ranges rise rapidly

The Andes Mountains went through a spurt in growth that doubled their height in a far shorter time than was thought possible, according to new research.

5-June-2008

Cool bacteria

Scientists have discovered a new species of bacteria that has been buried in a Greenland glacier for 120,000 years. It is still alive.

3-June-2008

Giant flying reptiles liked to walk

The largest flying flesh-eaters ever seen on Earth walked on their hind legs and grabbed their prey by bending down and snatching it up in their enormous bills.

27-May-2008

First dinosaur tracks ever seen in Arabia

Scientists have found the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. They belong to a large ornithopod dinosaur, and there are also signs of sauropods walking together along a Mesozoic mudflat.

20-May-2008

Scientists solve bird beak mystery

A team of mathematicians and engineers have shown how shorebirds use their long, thin beaks to defy gravity and get food into their mouths.

15-May-2008

The distant universe and the English spy

Astronomers on a mountain-top in Chile, where scenes for the next James Bond movie are being filmed, have been spying on the distant universe.

12-May-2008

New light on earliest Americans

The remains of a dozen huts in a peat bog 500 miles south of Santiago have provided new evidence of the earliest human settlement in the Americas.

8-May-2008

Biggest explosion ever seen

Early on Wednesday morning NASA’s Swift satellite detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful its afterglow could be seen by the naked eye. But the explosion happened halfway across the visible universe.

21-March-2008