BBC Science Focus Magazine

I once saw someone’s beating heart. Don’t worry, the story isn’t as grisly as it sounds. It was an ultrasound scan (also known as an echocardiogram): a video in black and white of my gran’s heart. She had a leaky valve, which meant blood didn’t always move around the chambers in one direction, as it should. Instead, each time the muscle relaxed, a flap in the heart wouldn’t close tightly enough and blood would flow backwards. The visual of a beating heart, on that screen, squeezing blood from one chamber into another, was probably one of the best biology lessons I had ever had. The textbook version of a heart, flat and motionless, didn’t really equip me with me with a proper understanding of how it worked. This did. Above…

Mouth Organ With new evidence suggesting that poor oral health can affect the whole body, Caroline Steel sinks her teeth into why the fields of dentistry and medicine have traditionally been kept separate. Listen now on BBC Sounds Winterwatch in Wales Welsh ornithologist Iolo Williams, travels from Wales’s rugged coast to its cities, to find out how animals seek refuge in winter. Watch now on BBC iPlayer Health Check: The global oxygen crisis Oxygen shouldn’t be a privilege. A world-first report has revealed the countries at risk of suffering a medical oxygen shortage and the steps we need to take to keep the global supply chain accessible. Listen now on BBC Sounds…

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Hitch a ride DERBYSHIRE, UK Symbiotic relationships show nature in harmony, how two species can mutually benefit each other as part of the complex tapestry of life. They can also be pretty gross, as demonstrated by the partnership between the phoretic mite and the dor beetle. The opportunistic phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi) use the beetles as a kind of public transport system. The orange mites hitch a ride on the bigger insects’ backs, wings or abdomens (as seen here) to the dor beetle’s favourite brunch spot: a fresh, steaming pile of dung. While the dor beetle tucks into the mouthwatering manure, the mites feast on fly larvae that’s been laid among the faeces. Beetles naturally compete with flies for the delicious droppings, so the mite’s choice of meal broadly benefits…

reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus LETTER OF THE MONTH A light lunch In the Q&A titled ‘How much weight fluctuation is normal?’ (February, p86), Dr Nish Manek says that eating food adds to your weight for a short time as it travels through your digestive system. I used to work at a health centre, where I used scales to determine a patient’s weight. One day, I weighed myself before lunch while holding my sandwiches and cake (minus the packaging and plates). Immediately after eating, I weighed myself again to see if it would be the same – only to find that I was three whole grams lighter than I had been before eating. Fred Bellamy, Bath WRITE IN! The writer of next issue’s…

Making changes to your everyday life can feel like you’re playing a part in making the future more environmentally sustainable. But new data suggests that storytelling by energy organisations often places an unrealistic burden on consumers to be heroes in the climate change narrative, absolving the industry of its responsibility. Meanwhile, individuals’ actions pale in comparison to the impact of big businesses. “We need to be much more careful about how we talk about this,” says Dr Tom van Laer from the University of Sydney Business School in Australia, who authored the study published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. Globally, the energy sector is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. So van Laer wanted to check how accurately energy organisations in his country – responsible for almost…