
The science of the calorie
- Science
- January 14, 2021, 06:00
The measure of heat energy was not translated to food until the end of the 19th century

Should Ireland consider compulsory vaccination against Covid-19?
- Science
- December 10, 2020, 06:00
At least half the population will need vaccination to stop coronavirus spread

Ireland’s first dog show: A £5,000 dog and a ‘perpetual growl’
- Life & Style
- November 28, 2020, 06:00
The 19th century saw new breeding methods and growing enthusiasm for pets

Lessons of history: What diet says about who we are
- Science
- November 12, 2020, 01:00
The Great Famine led to much soul searching about ‘good’ food versus ‘bad’

Facial expressions and what they really mean
- Science
- October 8, 2020, 01:00
Converting emotions into quantifiable physical signs fascinated Darwin and it’s still a fascination for scientists

What do our yellow Covid-19 signs say about us?
- Science
- September 10, 2020, 05:00
Ireland’s approach to posters has changed a lot since 19th-century cholera outbreak

Look to lichens for dating with a difference
- Science
- August 13, 2020, 01:00
The growth rate of this useful organism helps determine the age of the surface it grows on

Practices of livestock farming are a global health issue
- Science
- July 9, 2020, 01:00
If we crowd animals together in large numbers to feed ourselves we maintain a high risk from emergent zoonotic disease

Four traits you need to ride out the pandemic, Shackleton style
- Environment
- June 11, 2020, 01:00
In order of importance: optimism, then patience, next idealism and lastly courage

Coronavirus: The misguided search for ‘patient zero’
- Science
- May 12, 2020, 09:27
The danger is that, like in the past, the person will become a scapegoat for all our fears

Germs, germs everywhere
- Science
- April 9, 2020, 06:00
What will happen where trust in science is not a central part of wider culture?

Coronavirus containment: what we can learn from the Black Death
- Science
- March 12, 2020, 01:18
Did practice of closing people into their houses or ‘shutting up’ work?

Do surgical masks guard against viral infection?
- Science
- February 13, 2020, 00:00
At the outbreak of a virus, masks may give a sense of comfort but there is debate over their efficacy, with some medical professio(...)

New science in old places: Museums are crucial part of scientific research
- Science
- January 7, 2020, 16:29
‘Museum collections are key to understanding biodiversity over the last few centuries’

Pigs might not be able to fly, but it seems lab rats can drive
- Science
- November 14, 2019, 06:00
Lab rats also probably led some scientists to accept heterosexuality was not universal

How long has the science of forecasting weather been around?
- Science
- October 8, 2019, 10:48
Weather predictions and folklore are probably as old as human society

Robert Bunsen: The man who lit a fire under chemical science
- Science
- September 12, 2019, 05:00
German professor’s burner laid the basis for development of spectrum analysis

When discovering the moon wasn’t smooth made it a little less heavenly
- Space
- August 8, 2019, 06:00
Galileo risked ridicule when he suggested that the moon’s surface was not smooth

Will the Earth’s poles soon switch? And what would it mean?
- Science
- July 7, 2019, 14:42
The poles switch every few hundred thousand years. Opinion is split on the significance of this

Charting the take-off of air travel
- Science
- June 13, 2019, 00:00
From Alcock and Brown’s transatlantic crossing to global commercial flights, the 20th century saw astonishing developments in avia(...)

Ozone layer success story can be used to combat climate change
- Science
- May 9, 2019, 01:00
The ozone hole presents a compelling, simple narrative. We need more of these

Science has no one government, and does not have ethical consensus
- Science
- April 11, 2019, 01:00
CRISPR and genome editing raises issues that can no longer be ignored

Will this be one of our last years to spring forward?
- Science
- March 14, 2019, 01:00
The European Parliament is considering doing away with daylight savings time in 2021

The Galway professor behind our understanding of Neanderthals
- Science
- February 14, 2019, 05:00
William King was first to decipher that ancestors were different species to modern humans

Five notable scientific anniversaries in 2019
- Science
- January 10, 2019, 00:00
This June, it will be 100 years since world’s first non-stop transatlantic flight took place

In search of a good night’s sleep
- Science
- December 13, 2018, 06:00
The definition of ‘a good sleep’ is not the same at every time, in every place and for every person

Why are so many adults having braces put on their teeth?
- Science
- November 8, 2018, 06:00
The Irish have been gripped by the American beauty ideal of even, straight, white teeth

Why Galileo is in the ‘news’ again
- Science
- October 11, 2018, 00:00
The discovery of a letter shines new light on Galileo’s battles with the Catholic Church

The Irish engineer who broke new ground in study of earthquakes
- Science
- September 13, 2018, 06:00
In 1846 Robert Mallet delivered a paper on a machine to register seismic motion

The history of the kettle
- Science
- August 10, 2018, 01:00
From ‘booby trap for old ladies’ to efficient maker of heatwave-defying pot of tea

Fear of contagion clouds our thinking about the transmission of HIV
- Science
- July 12, 2018, 06:27
How can we treat people fairly while reducing risk to others of contracting the disease?

Cervical cancer screening has always been imperfect
- Science
- June 14, 2018, 06:00
Women should be trusted to understand the difficulties and told when mistakes happen

How nonhuman life forms can change the course of history
- Science
- May 10, 2018, 00:00
In the ‘Columbian exchange’, plants, livestock and diseases have as much impact as people

Mesmerising: The power of the human mind to respond to suggestion
- Science
- April 9, 2018, 11:49
Anton Mesmer combined his ideas with a flair for the dramatic that orthodox medicine found distasteful and the public found intrig(...)

The man with a finger in many pie charts
- Science
- March 5, 2018, 10:49
Ever wondered how pie and bar charts came to be? A single Scot, William Playfair, invented them

Why do we continue to exhibit animals in zoos?
- Science
- February 8, 2018, 06:00
A 19th-century zoological garden was an educational display for the pleasure of humans with only limited obligations to animal wel(...)

Feeling the winter chill? Raise a toast to Ireland’s polar explorers
- Science
- January 11, 2018, 06:00
Shackleton, Crean, Crozier, Hart: Irish names are all over the North and South poles

The benefits of being among the cyborg generation
- Science
- December 7, 2017, 10:16
The marvel of the pacing industry is the speed with which creating a human-machine hybrid has come from the extraordinary to the c(...)

Pollution continues to take its toll on the poor
- Science
- November 6, 2017, 10:04
Are we now condemning large parts of the world to more profound legacies of poverty linked to past and present pollution?

Atoms for Peace or Weapons of Mass Destruction?
- Science
- October 5, 2017, 16:11
When Carnsore Point was proposed as the site for Ireland’s first nuclear power plant

Are food allergies another branch of clean-eating hokum?
- Science
- September 14, 2017, 00:00
The rise of the peanut allergy suggests there are others out there that we cannot yet explain

History of Science Museums, Europe and the US
- Science
- July 27, 2017, 14:59
Why not enhance your summer travels with a visit to a history of science museum? Last month’s column had suggestions in Ireland an(...)

Holidays with a history
- Travel
- July 10, 2017, 12:33
From the Leviathan telescope in Birr Castle to the former ‘Bedlam’ in London, many museums in Ireland and England offer unique ins(...)

The Punnett Square: predicting the traits of offspring based on the traits of their parents
- Science
- June 8, 2017, 00:00
Solving the mystery of traits that disappear only to return in a future generation

A slice of death: changing attitudes to putting corpses on display
- Science
- May 11, 2017, 01:00
The ethics of publicly displaying or dissecting human corpses have always been grey

Why does Easter keep changing dates?
- Science
- April 13, 2017, 08:22
Ireland and Britain had their own way of calculating the date of Easter

Anti-vaccine sentiment will not be easily eradicated
- Science
- March 9, 2017, 05:00
Since the first vaccination – against smallpox – debate about vaccine safety has raged

Eugenics and the outer limits of good breeding
- Science
- February 9, 2017, 05:30
It hasn’t gone away, you know: Victorian junk science has its race-baiting adherents

When the government invaded our kitchens
- Science
- January 12, 2017, 01:00
Governments have a long history of interest in their citizens’ diets

The up and down history of thermometers
- Science
- December 7, 2016, 18:00
A string of less successful devices came before the hermetically sealed thermometer we know today

Sci fi and literature: how well have writers predicted the future?
- Science
- November 10, 2016, 01:00
HSTM Network Ireland is holding a conference at DCU on the history of the future

The Challenger disaster: a tragedy that knocked faith in space exploration
- Science
- October 13, 2016, 00:00
When Nasa’s shuttle exploded in 1986, killing seven, it put manned space travel in doubt

Tunnel vision: a plot to link Ireland and Britain ran deep
- Science
- September 8, 2016, 01:00
Various schemes were drafted in the 19th century to build a tunnel, but insurmountable obstacles scuppered each

Is pesticide the answer to the Zika outbreak?
- Science
- August 7, 2016, 08:00
The chequered history of chemical quick fixes suggests that extreme caution should be taken

Is the Irish climate a blessing in disguise?
- Science
- July 10, 2016, 08:00
Old theories that hot climates make people weak and fearful have proven remarkably durable

When Dublin did a roaring trade in lions
- Science
- June 9, 2016, 06:00
The Royal Zoological Society of Ireland bred lions from the 1850s, principally for zoos and circuses abroad

What the Irish chemistry set did during the Great War
- Science
- May 8, 2016, 06:00
Several Irish scientists contributed to explosive research during the first World War

Scientists are . . . unkempt, ageing and boring?
- Science
- April 10, 2016, 06:00
The image people have of a ‘scientist’ has changed since the 1950s, but some stereotypes are stubbornly persistent

Diseases are symptoms of changes in society
- Science
- March 10, 2016, 01:00
You probably think you know what a disease is: it makes you sick. But that’s not exactly how it works

The electricity between Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla
- Science
- February 11, 2016, 01:00
FRIENDSHIP WEEK: Twain was hugely interested in technology and struck up a friendship with the scientist

Climate change and Europeans go way back
- Science
- January 14, 2016, 01:00
At least as far back as the 17th century, Europeans believed that they could change climates

William Thomson: the crucial Irish link in the telegraph chain
- Science
- December 10, 2015, 01:00
When a plan to run a cable linking Europe and North America hit trouble, Thomson stepped in

Rinderpest: the plague that wreaked devastation on farmers
- Science
- November 12, 2015, 01:00
The isolation and slaughter of cattle are still routine responses to outbreaks

How an Irish duo saw through the Eozoön layer
- Science
- October 8, 2015, 01:00
Two scientists in Galway challenged the discovery of an ancient ‘fossil’ in Canada in 1864 but were ignored

Need help ‘opening the bowels’? Just ask Nicholas Culpeper
- Science
- September 10, 2015, 06:00
The physician’s 1649 book, A Physical Directory, explained the properties and effects of natural substances

The digging that got to the roots of potato blight
- Science
- August 13, 2015, 01:00
One lesson not learned from the Famine was that a monoculture is particularly vulnerable to disease

The Grubbs: 19th-century Irish stargazers
- Science
- July 9, 2015, 03:00
The Grubb family pioneered telescope manufacturing in the early 19th century from their Dublin base

Animal intelligence: a controversial science
- Science
- June 11, 2015, 02:00
In the 19th century, George Romanes was pilloried for suggesting that the most intelligent animals could learn to form abstract id(...)

Charles Cameron: a zoonotic pioneer in a Dublin full of animals and disease
- Science
- May 14, 2015, 03:00
Before Robert Koch established ‘the germ theory’, a Dublin doctor was examining the possibility of disease passing to humans via d(...)