Scientists from the Zoological Society of London have bagged the first ever wild footage of the long-eared jerboa. The timid, nocturnal creature can be found, with great difficulty, in the deserts of Mongolia and China. It is now, officially, Londonist's second favourite animal, behind the numbat. We defy you to watch this footage without grinning like a tomfool. How cute is that? Not as cute as this. Very little is known about the elusive......

Yesterday comes the news that a shiny new medical centre is to be built on wasteland somewhere behind the British Library….and today sees the start of the more-or-less obligatory protests therein. The idea is to build the £500 million ‘UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation’ as a partnership project – the key players are the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and University College Hospital. All very exciting. London could do......

You may remember that we're not exactly lukewarm about this place. We were even up for finding love here. I guess you could say we're fans. Nothing has changed with a change in exhibition: Sleeping and Dreaming is marvellous and you must go. For a start, it's free. Nought pee. You can just swan through the doors, turn left and there you are. But that's where it gets dark and you immediately start watching......

St George’s Hospital has reported over 100 deaths from hospital superbugs. 116 people have died from MRSA and Clostridium difficile at the Tooting hospital in the last four years. The report comes on the coattails of St George’s clinical rating being lowered from 'good' to 'fair'; an adjustment influenced largely by the hospital’s failure to combat the superbugs. These figures were released the same day that the NHS reported a 10% decrease in MRSA......

It turns out that being a genius doesn't mean you're a nice person. That's a lesson that the Science Museum reinforced today as they cancelled a talk by scientist Dr James Watson, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for his work in discovering the structure of DNA. Watson was scheudled to give a talk at the museum on Friday, but this was nixed after his controversial remarks in an interview with the Sunday Times.......

If Londonist were really rich we'd be out every night doing LOADS of fun stuff. We'd be going to see all of the cool things at London Design Festival. We'd be drinking beer out of plastic cups and dancing at the Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly gig. But we're not. Instead all our money goes on rubbish stupid bills and... actually not much else. So here's what we're going to do instead. Here's a......

Are you one of those people who in public claims you can't sing a note, but in private blasts out your favourite songs listening to the radio. In fact, are there any of us who don't secretly think we're amazing singers, we just don't quite know how to sing properly? Tonight, Tone-Deaf Tune-In is the event for you. Held at the Dana Centre in South Ken, the evening will explore the science behind tone-deafness......

Earlier this week we told you about Galaxy Zoo, where ordinary web users help astronomers by classifying the galaxies they capture in their telescopes. But Londoners are an exploratory bunch, and after sorting a few dozen of the Milky Way’s neighbours you might ask what you could see if you went outside and looked up at the sky yourself. We’ve got good news and bad news for you on that front. The bad news......

Nothing’s more mashable than the Periodic Table. It’s the ultimate nerd icon and eminently adaptable for other purposes. A Periodic Table of the Internet is currently doing the rounds, bringing the concept into the 21st Century. A genius idea. Not least because all the smaller sites on the Table are sure to blog about it, thus perpetuating its longevity. And now it’s our turn. Look, there we are. Bottom right corner. Propping up such......

London's got its share of surgical history, but our newest scientific exhibition space has strapped the operating theatre concept to a gurney and wheeled it into the 21st century. Last night at the Wellcome Collection a full house watched Dr Frank Wells perform open-heart surgery on a 68-year-old man. It was all done via a remote link to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, so although the audience wasn't in the same room as the patient......

This new space for science, arts and medicine isn’t yet on everyone’s cultural radar. It will be soon. The Wellcome Collection was opened yesterday by James Watson, the giant of science who co-discovered the structure of DNA. Watson said that we Brits ‘should be proud’ to boast such a centre, lambasting the rest of Europe and particularly the USA for lacking decent public science venues. And it really is a treasure. Three galleries chart......

How many hogs does it take to cleanse a whale? No, it's not a Zen koan. The glorious Victorian temple to murdered animals that is the Natural History Museum is cleaning up the whale exhibit in its Large Mammals Hall - using hog hair bristle brushes! But why hog hair brushes? There are many reasons, but mostly it's because using tiny, peculiar implements to clean the largest animals on Earth looks really impressive and......

What with all the drinking and smoking, pubbing and clubbing, gigging and ligging, not to mention trying to hunt down old Big Brother housemates with a custom Ted Nugent bow it's a wonder Londonist ever finds time to stop and smell the flowers. Yet even we will occasionally take a break from our hectic schedules to grab a good noseful of nature's gentle bounty. Pretty, aromatic, occasionally nutritious, easily recycled and low carbon emissions;......

The word ‘awesome’ used to mean jaw-on-floor and full of awe. It’s a definition that’s on the move, last seen passing the ‘hmm, yes, that’s rather good’ mark and creeping towards an ‘OK, thanks’ retirement home for decrepit adjectives. We’d like to pull it out of retirement for one last mission – to describe the twin Nasa rovers, still rolling across Mars, and this awesome (yes, we said it) documentary, which finally uses the......

Last week we mentioned the drop in garden birds within the capital, this week we have an increase to report. The grey heron is apparently thriving in London, with a record 32 pairs nesting in Battersea Park. Ecologist Valerie Selby elaborates on why this is a particularly good thing. They are a native species and a top predator in the food chain and eat a whole range of fish, frogs and ducklings which helps......

It's a good day for fans of caged simians. First, the dastard who stole SpongeBob the monkey from Chessington has been sentenced. Monkey rustler Marlon Brown will serve a year behind bars himself after what the judge described as "an act of devilry". In the event the monkey was recovered but it was traumatised and still is traumatised. You showed no remorse. SpongeBob has since been moved to Battersea Zoo. He infrequently updates his......

Further evidence of a decline in London's bird population was published yesterday. It seems mild winters are attracting birds towards the bountiful treats of the countryside and away from our gardens. A secondary factor is the rise in nest prices, with a typical urban perch now beyond the budget of the average first-time flyer. The results are presented in the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch (is the focus here on big gardens or big......

You've got to love a headline like this one: London backs £12m space mission Sadly we're not going to set up a new borough on the moon (a day return to the Phantom Zone would cost a fortune and the shuttles don't have Oyster readers installed yet), but we are investing in a new satellite to handle mobile phones in the capital. Probably needed after the added strain left by Twitter. The technology will......

No, seriously. We NEED them: A shortage of donor bodies is putting medical teaching at risk, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned. About 1,000 bodies are needed every year to teach anatomy to medical students, it is estimated. But the college predicted a 30% national shortfall in the number of bodies needed by medics in the current academic year. And our city is the worst with an expected 40% shortfall expected. London, what......

The British military have launched a new satellite: The British spacecraft is the first in what will eventually be a three-satellite constellation designed to allow the Army, Royal Navy and RAF to pass much more data, faster between command centres. "Skynet's going to provide five times the capacity that the previous system provided, and allow the military to do things they just haven't been able to do in the past," Mr Woods explained. Isn't......

Only March and it's already been a bumper year for science / art hybrid stuff that only makes us want more - more, damn it! More! Regular readers may have noticed a preference for the undead and the utterly unique on this site. Having received some information about a new exhibition at Londonist's favourite rusty-blades-and-decaptitating-hooks museum The Old Operating Theatre, we just had to share it with you, because we're assuming you love waxwork......

A total lunar eclipse, the first one visible from the UK since 2004, will be snuffing out the moon for several hours this Saturday night. A refresher for those of us who haven't seen a science programme in 20 years: a lunar eclipse is when the Earth, that mischievous little scamp, jumps up between the sun and the moon and makes little bunny shadow puppets that completely obscure the moon's face. Some say this......

Space is the Virgin frontier. Richard Branson's much-publicised rocketship business, Virgin Galactic, is well into the development phase and should be launching next year for test flights. But if you can't quite afford the £100,000 asking price for a trip beyond the atmosphere, you can settle for a sneak preview of the ship at the Science Museum. Well, so the PR says. In fact, it's just a mock-up of the interior decor, designed by......

And we live by the river. Latest climate change news: We're fucked: Scientists have issued dire warnings about the threat from climate change, predicting average world temperatures will rise by around three degrees by the end of the century, with devastating consequences. In the UK, rising sea levels could potentially cause huge damage to low-lying areas, including London and coastal and river areas. It's not all doom and gloom though. The Independent this morning......

a completely dead red-barbed ant BBC.com tell us that a team of scientists from the Zoological Society of London are beginning an ambitious project to save one of Britain's most endangered species… … the red-barbed ant (Formica rufibarbus) ... ... also known as the 'St. Martin's ant'. Why 'St. Martin's ant'? Your guess is as good as ours. The red-barbed ant ranges throughout Europe, from Western Siberia all the way to Portugal. Though it is......

If anything calls for a hasty repeat viewing of Carry on at Your Convenience then it's the news that doctors and members of the public have voted public sanitation as the greatest medical breakthrough since 1840. Sewage disposal and clean water supplies, among other aspects of sanitation, were chosen over 15 key medical advances named in an international poll by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). A shortlist of 15 discoveries was narrowed down to......

The words 'sublimely beautiful' and 'Euston Road' seldom decorate the same sentence, but here goes... Walk past the Wellcome Trust's HQ on Euston Road for this sublimely beautiful window display, and learn some science at the same time. The eyecatching fluorescent baubels, by designers Graphic Thought Facility, represent the structures of several proteins implicated in human disease. The rogues' gallery includes: leptin, a small protein that can cause obesity if it gets mangled; PPWD1,......

The Zoological Society of London has launched a new conservation programme for weird wildlife: Species like the bumblebee bat and the pygmy hippopotamus will be protected under the Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (Edge) project. The scheme targets animals with unique evolutionary histories that are facing a real risk of extinction. The ZSL says many of these species are ignored by existing conservation plans. The Society defines Edge animals as having few close relatives,......

Well folks, we're going to the moon. And stage one sounds so naff it just has to be British: Britain could soon be going to the moon under plans submitted to the body which funds UK space exploration. A study conducted for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council outlines bold proposals for two all-British moon missions, said the BBC. The first, named Moonlight, could be launched by 2010 and would see four suitcase-sized......

The war over intellectual property rights has opened up a new front as London scientists kick off the new year with a shot across the bow of Big Pharma: Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies, enabling millions in poor countries to be cured of infectious diseases and potentially slashing the NHS drugs bill.......