• Hitting an Invisible Target in TB Vaccine Design

    I have a troubled relationship with Twitter. It’s an unredeemable hate sort of thing. I’m generally an inane mix of angry opinion and low self-esteem so, in theory, we’re perfect for each other. I just don’t feel it, though. I had a quick look for online videos in the same vein of the YouTube...
  • Scientists find the gene for…

      Steve Jones begun his talk at the Henley Literature Festival by breaking the news that he was not the same Steve Jones who played guitar in the Sex Pistols. I was personally quite glad about this because it would have made writing this article on genetics somewhat difficult. The Welsh...
  • After the media fellowship

    I recently finished a month-long British Science Association Media Fellowship, spending three weeks at Nature and one week at the British Science Festival in Aberdeen. I’ve talked more about my thoughts on this experience at the Wellcome Trust blog. I’m now left wondering what on Earth I am...
  • Genega, or how we require all of our genes to survive

    I went to a birthday gathering in a pub the other day to which someone had brought along the game Jenga. Putting aside any conclusions you may want to make as to just how exciting it must be to party with my friends and me, the game actually illustrates an interesting point about evolution. Sort...
  • Blame the Europeans

    You know when you drive an unfamiliar car and you have to find your way round all these knobs and buttons to make the car go in the direction you want it to go in? M. tuberculosis has the same problem when it comes to the human immune system. This can make things tricky as it’s a pathogen that...
  • [Insert witty breast-related pun here]

    Kate Middleton’s boobs are everywhere, both in the flesh and spirit. That sounds like the plot of a horror film in itself (“Nooooo, we’re surrounded, I’m suffocating!”). But what I really want to bring to your attention is how boobs are somehow capable of turning normal, rational people into...

Sunday, 22 February 2015

In a small chapel just outside Prague, a chandelier made from every bone in the human body hangs from a garland of skulls like the world's creepiest wind-chime. Nearby, a coat of arms features an almost comical bone bird—its wings a human hand and its neck a gnarled vertebrae—that pecks at a skull's eye socket. In each corner...