Articles Archives

Physical Sciences

Listening across the oceans: Distributed acoustic sensing

Fibre optic cables have become the backbone of digital communication across the oceans. These cables are not just useful for transmitting information from one location to another – they can also be used as an incredibly long sensor array in themselves. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a powerful way of measuring sound and vibrations in the sea floor. Dr Ole […]

Business & Economics

Labour force projections: Egypt anticipates a resumption of demographic pressures

Egyptian youths born into the ‘echo generation’ of 2006–2014 are not yet of working age, but when they do enter the labour market there will be a vast increase in the supply of workers. Professor Ragui Assaad, of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in the US, has been estimating the effects of this increase. […]

Thought Leaders

EngineeringUK and The Big Bang Fair: Inspiring the next generation of STEM researchers

EngineeringUK seeks to promote engineering in all its facets. As part of this overarching mission, it runs the annual Big Bang Fair, a highly successful celebration of STEM research, aimed at 11–14 year-old students from across the UK. This year, thousands of young people gathered at the NEC in Birmingham, where they were presented with an array of installations, activities, […]

Behavioural Sciences

Justice and community: The rationality of learning by doing

Professor Robson addresses fundamental questions of social progress and how societies can experiment with different political and social systems without unduly disregarding tradition. This experimentation enables individuals and groups to learn how to better secure justice and improve society more generally. However, it also requires overcoming constraints associated with rationality, which prevent people and communities from taking the necessary risks […]

Health & Medicine

Facilitating open discussions: New guidelines for paediatric blended diets

Homemade blended diets are becoming more popular in children with long-term feeding tubes. Due to the challenges and intricacies of a blended diet, open discussions and multidisciplinary team working are crucial if we are to ensure consistency and plan for the best outcomes for the child and family. In 2020, Nestlé Health Science UK launched a paediatric tube feed containing […]

Behavioural Sciences

Considering environmental impact in happiness rankings

Most, if not all, people want to live a happy life, so surely a measure of a country’s success as a nation is how happy its citizens are? Most international success indices rank countries according to how they perform against various measures and include happiness as a key value, but fail to include the cost, especially to others. Emeritus Professor […]

Health & Medicine

Cooling Cryosim drops for treatment of cough

A cough can significantly impact our quality of life, disrupting sleep and daily activities. Coughing is usually a symptom of benign viral infections – but sometimes a cough can linger long after the infection has cleared and persist for months. There is a need for new treatments to alleviate lingering coughs. Professor Edward T Wei at the University of California, […]

Physical Sciences

Dendrimers: Improving calibration standards for mass spectrometry

Soft-ionization mass spectrometry (MS) techniques for the analysis of peptides, proteins, and macromolecules are gaining popularity in the medical research community. Specifically, matrix-assisted laser-desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI) can identify high molecular weight compounds with accuracy and minimal fragmentation of the sample, but precise and regular calibration with standards of a known mass is needed. Professor Scott M Grayson […]

Health & Medicine

Unlocking the mechanism of action of arsenic trioxide in leukaemia

The blood cancer acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL) has recently been transformed from a fatal condition to a curable one, thanks to the development of treatments including vitamin A1 and arsenic trioxide (ATO). Although very effective, the mechanism of action of ATO has remained unclear until now. Changing this is Professor Paul B Tchounwou and his team at Jackson State University, […]

Behavioural Sciences

Building a psychological toolbox: Actively using neuroplastic methods to develop lasting inner strengths

Social-emotional learning (SEL) makes use of the brain’s neuroplasticity to convert passing experiences into durable psychological resources embedded in altered neural structure or function. But most SEL is passive and inefficient, with limited gains for many people, in part due to the brain’s ingrained negativity bias. Dr Rick Hanson is a leading clinician in the field of emotional intelligence. He […]