This site has an interesting list of the top 10 deadliest animals on Earth.

The list includes some fairly obvious animals like the Australian Saltwater Crocodile, Great White Shark, African Lion and Indian Cobra. But I was surprised by their number 1 deadliest animal … the mosquito!

The reason: “Most mosquito bites just make you itch. But some mosquitoes carry and transfer malaria causing parasites. As a result, these little pests are responsible for the deaths of more than two million people a year.”

Killing two million people a year is pretty deadly! What do you think, are mosquitos really the deadliest animal on Earth?

Lego is a great toy and like many things it is made out of plastic. Plastics are polymers, which means that they are made up of long chains of atoms which repeat again and again. Each unit in a chain is called a monomer, and is a chemical usually derived from oil. Because they are made from oil plastics are made up of Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen.

There are many different uses for different types of plastic but my favourite is lego. If you want to know how lego is made check out this video:

To see more videos and learn more about the lego factory go here.

The periodic table of the elements is a list of known atoms (chemical elements). In the table the elements are placed in the order of their atomic numbers starting with the lowest number. The atomic number of an element is the same as the number of electrons or protons in the atom.

There are heaps of online periodic tables that give you information on all the elements, but they don’t included videos.

That is where ‘The Periodic Table of Videos‘ really shines. It includes a short YouTube video for every single element. For example here is Hydrogen:

And this is Sodium:

There are 118 videos in total so why not check it out!

Here’s an update on Oscar Pistorius, the amputee sprinter who runs with the aid of carbon-fibre prosthetic legs - he has failed in his bid to qualify for this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, after South Africa’s athletics federation left his name off its 1600-metre relay team today.

On Wednesday, the athlete, nicknamed the “Blade Runner”, ran his best ever 400-metre time, but his 46.25 seconds fell short of the 45.55 second minimum needed to qualify for Beijing. Read more here or here and check out the old post, including a video, here.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections.

It is particularly wide spread in Africa as this map illustrates:

How shocking is it that 20-36% of adults living in Botswana and Zimbabwe are infected with HIV!

If you have ever broken your leg you will know how annoying wearing a plaster cast is. Fortunately, the latest evidence suggests that ankles may heal faster and better if patients are fitted instead with removable splints or braces that they can take off daily.

As a bonus, patients can regularly wash their ankles and relieve the itches that so irritate plaster-cast wearers.

The benefits are thought to arise mainly from the exercise, which strengthens the broken joint and keeps it supple. Caution is advised, however, as accidents can happen, especially if patients fail to replace the splint immediately after washing and exercise. Read more here.

A Lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently a cat, with a funny caption, in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak”, or “Kitteh”.

Lolcats rarely have a great deal to do with science, but I thought this one was quite good:

To see more lolcats go to the biggest lolcat site on the internet - I Can Has Cheezburger? To learn more about current environmental issues go here.

Are you responsible for taking the rubbish out to be collected once a week at your house? How would you like it if you never had to ‘take out the trash’ ever again?

Maybe you should move to Kamikatsu, where residents have to compost all their food waste and sort other rubbish into 34 different categories. Rubbish collectors never visit the small town as absolutely ALL rubbish is composted or recycled. Read more here and check it out:

What do you think - good idea or too much hassle?

If you mix corn flour (corn starch) and water together you get a really funky liquidy goop. This goop is often called oobleck and it has some really cool properties. This video is a fine example of oobleck in action:

The reason the guys in that video can walk on the liquid is because it is a non-Newtonian fluid. In this case, corn flour is made up of very long molecules (called starch), so if you hit the oobleck hard the molecules get caught up on one another and provide resistance kind of like a solid. But if you just slowly push on oobleck you will sink into it because the long molecules will have a chance to slowly slide past one another.

Another cool video explaining oobleck can be found here. And this video of oobleck dancing around on top of a sub-woofer is also pretty amazing.

By the way, if you have never made oobleck before I strongly recommend it. Just go the supermarket and buy some corn flour, then mix it with water until the consistency is … well, you’ll know when you have it. Enjoy

The iPhone 3G was released the other day so I’m sure there will be more mobile phone conversations happening now than there ever was before. Maybe some people will even be talking on their iPhone while driving! Motorists who talk on their mobile phones while driving often claim it is no more dangerous than chatting to a passenger.

That has been disproved - and it now turns out that having someone in the car actually improves safety. People drive more carefully if they are carrying passengers and the more passengers on board, the safer the driving gets. Read more here.

Check out this photo of a new-born Giant Panda—one of a set of twins born to 12-year-old Guo Guo.

Guo Guo was born on September 1996, in the China Wolong Giant Panda Protection Research Center, she became pregnant in March this year. Guo Guo is the first captive panda to give birth since the 7.9-magnitude quake rocked Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008.

The Giant Panda is an endangered species and highly threatened.

See some different, but still cool, pictures here.

Not long ago we learnt that the athletics officials at the Olympic games will be cheating!

And it seems they wont be the only ones. The boxing, wrestling and taekwondo referees will also be cheating - those scoundrels.

Generally referees try to be fair, although on occasion even the best make bad calls. Now it would seem that sometimes they cannot help it.

Scientists have discovered that colours worn by competitors can shape referee decisions. When refereeing a match between a red and a blue competitor it seems that referees give 13% more points to red competitors, even when the performances are exactly the same. Read more here.

This is particularly worrying considering that competitors in the Olympics wear red and blue colours! Cheaters I say

This is a fantastic animation illustrating many of the human bodies biological processes. It includes the heart, blood vessels, red and white blood cells, cell membranes and DNA to name a few. It is from a company called Hybrid Medical Animation. Check it out:

Orangutan numbers have declined sharply on the only two islands where they still live in the wild and they could become the first great ape species to go extinct if urgent action isn’t taken. The declines in Indonesia and Malaysia since 2004 are mostly because of illegal logging and the expansion of palm oil plantations. Orangutans are primates, just like us. Considering that in some parts of the world orangutans, as well as other great apes, have the same legal rights as humans their impending extinction is very concerning. Read more here.

All living things are made up of cells, and cells are controlled by a molecule called DNA. DNA contains a complex set of instructions which makes us who we are. All organisms (living things) have DNA and the instructions are different for a plant compared to a fish compared to a human.

Cells are really small and because DNA is found within cells it is even smaller. Because it is so small it is very hard to see. You would need a microscope, unless you are able to get a heap of DNA all bundled together. To do that you have to extract the DNA from many, many cells of an organism.

In fact, extracting DNA is not that hard to do. You can even do it at home. If you would like to give it a go some instructions can be found here or here. If you would like to know what extracted DNA looks like without going to the trouble yourself just check out this video.

As a teacher, my job is to try and prepare my students for the world that awaits them. The problem is, what will that world look like? If you don’t know what I am talking about, check out this slideshow:

What do you think the world will look like in 5, 10 or 20 years time?

While most of the attention on the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions has focused on its ability to act as a greenhouse gas, that warms the earth’s climate, the changes CO2 emissions will bring to the world’s oceans are receiving increasing attention. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more of it that dissolves into surface ocean water. That results in a small chemistry change that could cause huge changes in marine biology.

Tidal power is a form of renewable energy that converts the energy of tides into electricity or other useful forms of power.

Tidal power looks like it is about to get a revamp in the form of a giant snake. Check it out:

The passage of each wave squeezes the rippling “Anaconda” and produces a bulging pressure wave that travels down its length. When the bulge reaches the end it sets turbines spinning to generate electricity. Its developers say it would produce more energy than existing wave-energy devices and be cheaper to maintain. Read more here.

Some recent medical research has indicated that bloggers are less lonely, more satisfied with their friendships and feel more connected and supported than those who don’t blog. Furthermore, it seems that blogging can foster critical thinking and feelings of connection. Read more here.

So what are you waiting for, start your own blog. I use WordPress  and Blogger  because they are both free and easy to use. But you could choose one of many other options like Blog .

So what are you waiting for, start writing. If your are stuck for inspiration have a look at this great blog for ideas

Mountain ecosystems are experiencing a major mix-up in plant species, thanks to climate change. As Earth heats up the cool alpine temperatures, plant species have begun a slow-motion escape, relocating upward an average of 29 meters per decade. With plant species migrating at different speeds, the entire makeup of mountainside communities is changing and potentially heading toward extinction. Read more here.

On top of this, as sea temperatures rise, many fish are electing to move into deeper, cooler waters, or move to higher latitudes where it is colder. Because the sea floor is not uniform in depth, the temperature changes are forcing bottom-dwelling fish to move to new locations so they can stay within the same underwater climate. This temperature-seeking behaviour is leading them to move in different directions. Read more here.

Humans need to remember that they share this planet with millions of other living things. We don’t want to destroy it!