biology

Not everything in the garden is lovely

4 November 2023 9:00 am

For as long as we have been human, powerful chemicals in plants have provided us with stimulants, analgesics – and the means of murder

Laurel Hubbard is the beginning of the end of women’s sports

22 June 2021 8:33 pm

When women’s professional soccer was deemed good enough for our TV screens a couple of years ago, I was watching…

The solving of a biological mystery

2 December 2020 5:00 am

DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that…

Could the lockdown have side-effects no one has considered?

2 May 2020 9:00 am

Is the lockdown causing more harm than good?

Popular medical non-fiction will soon have covered every human body part

17 August 2019 9:00 am

Nobody warns you when you start medical school that your career decisions have only just begun. Up to a decade…

The majority of sexual encounters in giraffes involve two males necking

Humans are animals, and our extinction is inevitable – but we’re still pretty amazing

22 September 2018 9:00 am

Ever since enlivenment of the primordial blob, before thoughts were first verbalised, all nature has always been motivated by a…

Oh brave new gender-fluid world…

2 September 2017 9:00 am

Later this year, the Advertising Standards Authority will reveal to the world their list of rules designed to wipe out…

How ‘stress management’ can make your blood pressure soar

21 November 2015 9:00 am

‘Stress management’ seems to be perpetually on the rise

Incline your upper body slightly forward and place your feet on a low foot rest. Then all the angles are correct

Digesting all the facts — without getting bogged down

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Funnily enough, after my editor sent me these three books to read, my guts started playing up. Suddenly, food seemed…

Humans are doing democracy wrong. Bees are doing it right

2 May 2015 9:00 am

What the hive knows about democracy that humans have yet to learn

Your immune system’s war isn’t Saving Private Ryan — it’s Homeland

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches…

Spectator letters: Why Aids is still a threat, elephants are altruistic, and crime has gone online

26 April 2014 9:00 am

Aids is still deadly Sir: Dr Pemberton (‘Life after Aids’, 19 April) subscribes to the now prevalent view that we have…