From cinchona to coffee, humans have exploited properties of plants. But does our favouritism or misuse turn these plants into heroes and villains? Explore the plants that provide us with essential products, from food to medicines and insecticides.

This Catalyst article discusses the science behind motivation in sport. Self-efficacy has been shown to have a strong influence on performance in athletes, with those who believe in themselves generally attaining more success than those who are plagued with self-doubt. Psychologists are developing theories to...

A Catalyst article about Darwin's beetle collection - an early step in his scientific career. Beetle-collecting was something of a craze in the early 19th century; at the same time, scientific understanding of these creatures grew rapidly. The well illustrated article looks at Darwin's work in this field.

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A Catalyst article about how the scanning by an electron microscope of pollen grains shows up their structure, and can help scientists understand why some people suffer from an allergic reaction - hay fever. The article describes how the images were made and how they are used in scientific research.

This...

In this case study, from the Centre for Science Education and the AstraZeneca Science Teaching Trust, Sarah Williams and Matthew Bailey, from King Ecgbert School in Sheffield, share their experience of creating an interactive activity to help students with special educational needs to understand food webs and the...

This Catalyst article is devoted to brine shrimps. It examines their life cycle and food chain and also provides some advice on how to keep and care for them.

This article is from Catalyst: GCSE Science Review 2003, Volume 13, Issue 4.

Catalyst is a science...

This Catalyst article describes a film which has been made to provide a range of reasons for students to study science. During the film high profile scientists, writers and teachers describe how science provides the technologies which are used in everyday life, how it can protect the environment and how it protects...

A Catalyst article examining the UK’s electricity supplies, twenty per cent of which come from nuclear power stations. Many of these power stations are approaching the end of their working lives. The article looks at the future prospects for nuclear power bearing in mind their safety record and environmental...

This Catalyst article examines malaria which is one of the world’s top ten diseases but an effective vaccine to combat it is yet to be discovered. Scientists in the Malaria Vaccine Group at Oxford are trying to overcome some very difficult problems using a new approach to vaccines.

This article is from...

This Catalyst article focuses on Katherine Johnson, who was one of a number of black American women whose work as 'computers' made NASA's early work possible.

This article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2017, Volume 27, Issue 3.

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This article looks at the ways scientists have detected dark matter.

This Catalyst article discusses how experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which discovered the Higgs boson, at the CERN laboratory can tell us about the nature of matter in the early universe. ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of the experiments taking place at the LHC. It breaks down...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine. Addiction is a term we all use, but what does it mean? Explore some of the ways people understand addiction.

Find out about the science behind addictions. Two lesson plans are also included. The Deadliest Drugs...

In this Catalyst article, Laura Plant describes the time she spent in the Amazon rainforest in northern Peru on a project researching the impacts of forestry on the plants and animals that live there.

In tropical regions, large areas of rainforests have been untouched for centuries. This means that many rare...

This Catalyst article investigates the nature of aerogels, which are among the least dense solid materials, not much denser than air. Aerogels were made as the result of a bet and ended up going into space to capture comet dust. They are the lightest solids which exist and have some unusual features.

The...