Author: News
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EUSci at the Fringe 2017 / The Naked Dietitian
I’ll be honest, when I sat down and first started watching ‘The Naked Dietitian’, a one woman show at the Quaker Meeting House (Venue 40), I thought the editor had sent me to the wrong place. With the remit of reviewing a ‘science-themed show’ it wasn’t immediately obvious to me where the science was coming…
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Prion disease pathogenesis and microbiota: how answering one question unveils many more
Professor Neil Mabbott and his group at the Roslin Institute have contradicted data that was originally published more than 20 years ago by showing that the progression of the prion diseases is not influenced by the composition of the mammalian microbiota. The prion diseases are a group of progressive neurodegenerative diseases that affect humans and…
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Secrets in the genome: mysteries of the cryptobyotes
Would you believe it if you were told that there are organisms that can exist and function perfectly well in the near absence of water? Perhaps not. All our lives, we are taught how water is the basis of all life forms. Not only does it drive many chemical reactions, it also acts as an…
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Exoplanet data: a new frontier?
June 19th, 2017 – The Kepler space telescope, quietly searching for a twin to Earth, has scanned the light of thousands of stars for the signature dimming of light, indicating planets traversing their surface via orbit. Eight years on and NASA has released the final data from the original Kepler mission, comprising 219 verified planet…
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Regeneration: A Story of Becoming
Something special happens when you combine art and science. At first glance, or even first thought, it seems these two disciplines are separate entities. When combined however, the reality that both disciplines are rooted in the philosophy of discovery and understanding of the world comes shining through. The realisation of this and its ensuing beauty…
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How super are supercomputers?
What are supercomputers? How important are they and how similar are they to our personal computers? Weronika Filinger is an HPC Application Developer at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the University of Edinburgh, and she was involved in creating the content of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Supercomputing or High Performance…
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Science on a summer’s evening 2017: Chemistry’s role in recovering metals from “urban mines”
When we think about metals like iron and gold or aluminium and zinc, we think of them as familiar and part of our everyday lives and therefore, to some extent, we take them for granted. But what if we spoke about metals such as dysprosium or gadolinium? These metals are as much a part of…
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LIGO makes third detection of gravitational waves
It is not often that people associate Albert Einstein with getting something wrong, yet even he made a mistake when he could not bring himself to believe in the existence of gravitational waves, as predicted by his own theory of general relativity. Luckily he was dissuaded from withholding his astonishing findings by a colleague, though…
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Learning to read changes the adult brain
Reading is an activity that does not come to us naturally, but with gradual learning can have a profound impact on our brains. In her book “Proust and the Squid”, Maryanne Wolf describes the long process of reading acquisition by ancient civilisations – from simple writing systems and tokens to creation of alphabets that provided…
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The science of keeping an open mind
Having an open mind can only help these days; the world is rapidly changing in every way – from how we think of education and jobs to how we communicate with one another – and being receptive and creative in today’s climate is often seen as an incontestable advantage. However, defining open-mindedness and what it…