Category: Uncategorized
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Music was my first love…
New research illustrates the potential for music therapy for people with Alzheimer’s. We’re all aware of the power of music – be that its ability to make you move your feet, shed a few tears, or take you back to the first time you ever heard a song. This power is being harnessed by music…
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Robotic Touch: Artificial skin brings robots closer to ‘touching’ human lives
When we anticipate the different future innovative technologies we imagine that the manufacturing industry will be completely automated, routine medical procedures will be robot-assisted and the world’s most puzzling crimes will be unraveled by robotic-detectives. It’s fair to say that robots have made significant developmental strides since their inception into our society. Although robotic process…
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Venus Flytraps Generate Measurable Magnetic Fields
Magnetic fields produced by the venus fly trap have been measured by an interdisciplinary team of scientists. Lily Sharratt-Davidson explores the impact these findings could have on plant diagnostics. The venus flytrap (or Dionaea Muscipula) is a well-recognised carnivorous plant – infamous for its ability to capture small insects inside its cage-like leaves. This unusual…
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Tunes from the Stone Age: Paleolithic horn comes back for an encore
Following a sojourn to Europe in the 1820s, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called music the “universal language of mankind.” The recent discovery of an 18,000-year-old seashell horn by a group of French anthropologists may stand as a testament to the time-enduring quality of his statement. Writing in the journal Science Advances, the researchers…
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Mine, Mine, Mine: The Epidemic of Vaccine Nationalism and Hoarding
Linta Nasim explores emerging vaccine nationalism and its implications on public health strategy and ending the coronavirus pandemic. Ugly vaccine nationalism, as feared by the World Health Organisation (WHO), human rights and public health advocates worldwide, is here. As recently as September last year at the UN General Assembly, nations were united as the global…
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Hedy Lamarr: The actress that made (frequency hopping) waves
On the occasion of the Women and Girls in Science Day, Marie Poirot highlights the contributions of inventor and Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr to modern technology. “The unknown was always so attractive to me”. This quote is a good way to describe inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr. World-famous for her movie career and outstanding beauty,…
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High Tech Fashion: Radiation-proof is the new black
Yury Gogotsi and his colleagues have just developed highly conductive and scalable Ti3C2Tx-coated fabrics capable of efficient electromagnetic interference (EMI) shield. Pretty exciting, no doubt. But exactly how efficient are the high-tech products? Is their effect long-lasting enough to prevent them from being dumped like fast fashion clothes? Are they just another expensive wearable-tech fad?…
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New tetraquark particle tests current theories in particle physics
On June 30th, an experiment at the LHC in Geneva (LHCb) reported on arXiv what could be a particle made up of four quarks. The tetraquark particle, named X(6900), is thought to be made of two charm quarks and two of their antimatter counterparts, anticharm quarks. This is the first time that a particle has…
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The road to a cure for HIV: the São Paulo Patient
A possible new treatment for HIV on the horizon Promising news regarding treatment of HIV came out of Brazil on the 7th of July. After participating in a trial study in 2015, the São Paulo Patient is the third person to ever be cured of HIV, joining the cohort of the Berlin Patient and the…
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A coronavirus vaccine is desperately needed, but what are we willing to do to get it?
Tom Edwick dives into the ethics of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. As we move into month four of lockdown, life as we knew it seems little more than a distant memory. Life in this new covid era has thrown up a lot of fun experiences that I wouldn’t have had to deal with otherwise, like having…