The meltdown at a nuclear power station in Fukushima, Japan, ten years ago stoked anxieties about nuclear energy. But nuclear is one of the safest, most reliable and sustainable forms of energy, and decarbonising will be much more difficult without it.
Category Archives: Reviews
Alzheimer’s Disease: ‘How It Starts & Progresses’
The first event in our Lab Notes online series features two researchers from our South Coast Network Centre talking about early brain changes in Alzheimer’s. Dr Karen Marshall shares her work studying how waste disposal and recycling systems in nerve cells cause damage in Alzheimer’s disease, and whether there could be ways to rescue cells from this. Dr Mariana Vargas-Caballero speaks about her research into brain cell connections and how they are affected in Alzheimer’s. The event is chaired by Dr Katy Stubbs from Alzheimer’s Research UK, and also features a Q&A session.
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (Mar 5, 2021)
Science Podcast: 2000-Year-Old Pet Cemetary, Eyeless Worms See Color
Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a 2000-year-old pet cemetery found in the Egyptian city of Berenice and what it can tell us about the history of human-animal relationships.
Also this week, Dipon Ghosh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about how scientists missed that the tiny eyeless roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has been intensively studied from top to bottom for decades, somehow has the ability to detect colors.
Infographic: ‘Vaccines Without Needles’ (WSJ)
Technologies in development for delivering vaccines include Enesi’s dissolving implants, microneedle patches, electrical-pulse systems, nasal sprays and even pills.
Some firms are developing their own vaccines against Covid-19, while others are aiming to reformulate some of the dozens already in development or being rolled out world-wide. Some are sitting this pandemic out in the hope of being ready for the next one.
All are in the early to mid-stages of development and clinical testing, suggesting it might be months if not years before they come to market. Big pharmaceutical companies have so far shown limited interest.
Home Design: Top Space-Saving Accessories (Video)
Space saving furniture and accessories.
Green Energy: Harnessing Ocean Wave Power (Video)
Searching for ways to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, engineers and entrepreneurs are looking to a largely untapped potential source of renewable energy: wave power.
Science Podcast: Unequal Surge In Research Papers, Energy Without Oxygen
The pandemic’s unequal toll on the research community, and a newly discovered mitochondria-like symbiosis.
In this episode:
00:48 The pandemic’s unequal toll on researchers
Although 2020 saw a huge uptick in the numbers of research papers submitted, these increases were not evenly distributed among male and female scientists. We look at how this could widen existing disparities in science, and damage future career prospects.
Editorial: COVID is amplifying the inadequacy of research-evaluation processes
09:18 Research Highlights
How a parasite can make viral infections more deadly, and the first known space hurricane.
Research Highlight: Intestinal worms throw open the door to dangerous viruses
Research Highlight: The first known space hurricane pours electron ‘rain’
11:36 Energy without oxygen
Millions of years ago, a microscopic protist swallowed a bacterium and gained the ability to breathe nitrate. This relationship partially replaced the cell’s mitochondria and allowed it to produce abundant energy without oxygen. This week, researchers describe how this newly discovered symbiosis works.
Research Article: Graf et al.
News and Views: A microbial marriage reminiscent of mitochondrial evolution
19:22 Briefing Chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, the weakening of the Gulf Stream, and a new satellite to monitor deforestation in the Amazon.
The Guardian: Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists
Science: Brazil’s first homemade satellite will put an extra eye on dwindling Amazon forests
Aviation: ‘Top Ten New Planes Of 2021 & Beyond’
Despite the recent disruption in air travel, engineers have never stopped working on more technological aircraft that will be reshaping the way we traverse the skies during the third decade of the 21st century. The end goal of the new planes are cleaner and more efficient propulsion systems, better flight autonomy and safety, and surely added in-flight comforts when it comes to passenger jets. In today’s episode we will be exploring the latest aviation news and model introductions,
Covid-19: ‘What Are The Vaccine’s Ingredients?’
There are all sorts of different vaccines but many of them share specific types of ingredients. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Professor Adam Finn to find out what is in most conventional vaccines, as well as what they do to our bodies when we take them – and why the mRNA Covid jabs from Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Moderna work differently.
