Articles Archives

Thought Leaders

Engineering the future: How the WE@RIT programme is encouraging more women into the sector

The Kate Gleason College of Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is the only engineering college in the United States to be named solely after a woman engineer. Inspired by Kate Gleason’s legacy as an innovative and entrepreneurial scholar, the Women in Engineering at RIT (WE@RIT) programme was initiated by Professor of Mechanical Engineering Margaret Bailey in 2003. Since […]

Physical Sciences

François Viète’s revolution in algebra

François Viète is considered by many historians to be the founder of modern algebra, but his work has not received the academic attention it deserves. Professor Jeffrey Oaks from the University of Indianapolis seeks to redress this imbalance. Through his study of Medieval and Renaissance mathematics, Professor Oaks shows how Viète reestablished algebra on a geometrical foundation; and in the process […]

Physical Sciences

Generalising the entropy formula through master equations

Entropy is one of the most important and most widely studied quantities in physics, and for centuries, its value has been robustly described using simple mathematical relationships. Yet however elegant, Tamás Biró at the Hungarian Academy of Science believes the formula is hiding a more complex array of relationships. Through constructing ‘master equations’ to describe these relationships, Biró and his colleagues […]

Health & Medicine

Extracellular vesicle DNA: A promising cancer biomarker

Lung cancer patients could one day receive faster, cheaper and more accurate diagnoses thanks to extracellular vesicle DNA found in liquid biopsies. These were the findings of a research team led by Professors Kye Young Lee and Jae Young Hur of Konkuk University’s School of Medicine. Their work offers an alternative to invasive tissue biopsies which are currently used to detect […]

Health & Medicine

Values and evidence meet: Appropriate healthcare assessment for vulnerable patients

Healthcare technology assessment is about discovering how healthcare technologies enable us to create value. A key factor is clinical ethics, yet historically this has been overlooked. Researchers Gert Jan van der Wilt, Herbert Rolden, Janneke Grutters and Angela Maas at Radboud University Medical Centre explore the ethical and social implications of health care technologies. Their research aims to develop concepts […]

Physical Sciences

NMR²: A highly accurate approach to protein-ligand binding

A novel method to determine accurately and efficiently the structure of the receptor binding sites in protein-ligand complexes promises to revolutionize drug discovery. Dr Julien Orts and his collaborators at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology are developing a powerful and general technique, based on liquid nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), to shed light on the details of how proteins interact […]

Physical Sciences

Forecasting Tsunamis using Ship Navigation Records

In recent years, the Earth has been rocked by devastating Tsunamis. The ability to predict how intense they will be is crucial in deciding how to mitigate their effects. This is what makes the work of Daisuke Inazu at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and fellow researchers so important. Their pioneering work in using the Automatic Identification Systems […]

Physical Sciences

Stripping paintings of their secrets with hyperspectral imaging

What lies beneath hundreds of years of paint? Professor Costas Balas at the Technical University of Crete, Greece is privy to some of the secrets of the great Renaissance masters with his hyperspectral imaging devices. Such devices can be used to identify not just what chemicals are present in pigments on the surface layers of paintings, but also what lies underneath. Art restoration is […]

Health & Medicine

Evolutionary arms race: A 400 million-year-old battle between HIV and ancient genes, HERC5 and HERC6

Two human genes, HERC5 and HERC6 have protective effects against HIV and other viruses. Dr Stephen D. Barr from Western University, Canada, traces the evolution of these genes throughout human history and investigates their protective effects. His work has shown that these genes are involved in an evolutionary arms race, with host defence mechanisms and the virus ever trying to […]

Health & Medicine

MacBrainResource: Virtual access to decades-old primate brains

MacBrainResource is a vast collection of macaque brain slides and electron microscope (EM) blocks generated in the laboratories of Dr Pasko Rakic and the late Dr Patricia Goldman-Rakic. Drs Lynn Selemon and Alvaro Duque at Yale University School of Medicine are committed to making these valuable brains available to researchers both on-site and remotely via website access (macbrainresource.org). MacBrainResource represents […]