Author: Naira Woo

Imagine a world without bees. Of the myriad insects, bees are indispensable for pollinating crops worldwide, as insect pollination represents 9.5% of the total economic value of agricultural production of human produce. Bees in particular can increase the yield of crops such as cotton by up to 62% (Khalifa et al., 2021). Despite their importance,…

The flavour of the wine you drink comes partly from wood, specifically, the wooden barrel it was aged in. Wooden barrels are an integral part of the wine aging process and affect the taste of wine in various ways. During fermentation, the wine is in contact with the wood, allowing chemicals from the barrel to…

When people think of the most terrifying creepy crawlies, earwigs may come to mind. Their name comes from a Western myth that claims they crawl into people’s ears to lay eggs in the brain (Ren et al., 2019). In reality, these arthropods prefer to hide under rocks, foliage and in moist crevices, not in human…

Which is better for the human diet: animal protein or plant protein? This is a highly debated topic given that diet plays a large role in human health, especially bone health. Some argue that animal-based proteins are detrimental to bone health and plant proteins should be consumed instead. Others believe that plant proteins are not…

Memories form a core part of life, facilitating learning, maturation, and even survival. Now imagine not being able to form memories at all. Such was the case of Henry Gustav Molaison, a man who not only lost his memories, but his ability to form new ones. Molaison was not always an amnesiac. At age ten,…

Whether it be dogs, humans or hamsters, cancer appears to affect all organisms. However, it does not affect all organisms equally. The naked mole-rat, Heterocephalus glaber, lives in underground burrows where they have no need for hair to protect them from the sun (San Diego Zoo, 2022). They are eusocial, meaning that they have a…

“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly,” is a quote from Dreamworks’ 2007 animation Bee Movie. This fictitious claim originated from French entomologist, August Magnan, and mathematician Andre Sainte-Lague, who calculated that it should be impossible for bees to fly (Altshuler et al., 2005).…