Marty Jopson

But evolution is not a process of increasing complexity, nor any other measure of superiority you can find.

none of us is an island and we all live out our lives surrounded by other humans.

Our genus Homo contains just one species at the moment, and that’s us

he system was invented back in 1735 by one of the great scientists of the eighteenth century, a Swedish naturalist called Carl Linnaeus

the humble and dull-looking lymphocytes turned out to be at the heart of the system. Not only that, there are three distinct flavours of lymphocyte: the B-cells make antibodies, the T-cells identify foreign agents in our bodies and the natural killer cells seek out and destroy our own cells that have become infected with viruses.

and to my mind there is nothing more fascinating than the science of being human.

causative molecule in chillies, capsaicin

hydroxy-alpha-sanshool

bare nichrome wires

steviol glycoside group of chemicals derived from the South American sugarleaf herb