In this mini edition of Catalyst magazine, marine biologists Magnus Johnson and Melanie Coull, from the University of Hull, explore just how little we know about plastic waste in the ocean.

The world generates 288m tonnes of plastic worldwide each year, but little is known about it's fate in the ocean once...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine.

While providing immense benefits, drugs are not the perfect solution. They only work on a proportion of patients,...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine. How do we stop new diseases emerging or re-emerging infections getting out of hand?

How does this happen in a world of...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine. Why does Darwinian evolution raise controversy when, say, quantum mechanics scarcely registers on the public consciousness?

This Catalyst article takes the form of a practical activity. Many breakfast cereals are fortified with iron and it is possible to extract this from the cereal by following the instructions in the article.

This article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2.

...

This Genetic Futures workshop, from the Centre for Science Education and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), provided an opportunity for students to think and talk about the potential benefits and problems of an advance in DNA technology...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine. The Earth's climate is changing ever faster, and human activities play a role in speeding up this change.

The Earth’s climate is changing. In fact, it has always been...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine. This issue looks at the interplay between the biology that sculpts our form and the culture that interprets and adapts it.

This Catalyst article explains how to make an elastic band using Copydex, a source of rubber latex. Rubber latex is a liquid polymer. It is made of long molecules which are all separate. Elastic bands are made by cross-linking the polymers in rubber latex. This changes the properties of the polymer and forms a...

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity gives students the opportunity to practise quickly skim-reading a text to assess its usefulness.

A guided activity asks students to quickly browse through a scientific article and extract information such as its title, author and the subject of...

These activities, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, help students to look at a text, after an initial skim read, to judge if it is worth considering in more detail.

This ‘second glance’ activity serves several aims:
* It enables students to assess quickly what is the subject of the...

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity helps students to consider how useful and informative article titles are.

During the activity, students:
* browse a scientific article.
* look for information such as the author, publication date and content of the abstract.
*...

These activities, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, help students to identify different sections in scientific texts which help to create an order and logical progression of the information conveyed. It encourages students to look at how the information is split into several principal types and...

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity helps students to further examine scientific texts.

Texts can be characterised according to the type of information or knowledge they deal with. There are different kinds of texts and they can be classified and sorted in various ways. This...