After a long and extremely enjoyable break, I’m back!

Thought I might restart the blog with a few not neonatology things that I enjoyed recently.

This post by Ed Yong on a study of how the malaria mosquito’s mouth parts find your blood. Includes some fascinating videos of the mosquito in action.

Some of you may have heard of a political party in the UK called UKIP. Well one of their members (a member of the European parliament, no less, who wants the UK out of Europe) recently referred to recipients of UK overseas aid as being the inhabitants of Bongo-Bongo land who use the munificence of British aid to buy certain luxuries for themselves. Well there is a great putdown by Afua Hirsch over at the Guardian. ‘A travel guide to Bongo-Bongo land‘

I didn’t know Bears had triplets, but as well as having multiple, non-IVF births, they look after them! The video from a bear cam watching the annual Salmon fishing of the bears shows a mother protecting her cubs from another bear.

In a recent essay in ‘New republic’ Steven Pinker discussed the merits of science, and a scientific worldview. Two of the triumphs of science have been, as he notes, the elimination of smallpox and of Rinderpest. He does not include a more recent and equally dramatic success, the elimination of Guinea Worm. Perhaps because the methods used were so low tech, not fancy vaccines, but filtering drinking water and education. But without science we would never have known the life cycle of the worm, and how to rid the planet of this awful parasite. Which now appears to be gone. Forever.