Articles Archives

Health & Medicine

Timely insulin therapy to treat type 2 diabetes

Diabetes is a tricky condition to treat. While insulin can efficiently lower blood sugar levels and protect pancreatic ꞵ-cells, it can also cause harmful side effects such as hypoglycaemia and weight gain. Severe hypoglycaemia may trigger arrhythmias and cardiovascular events. Professor Markolf Hanefeld suggests that an individualised approach to start timely insulin therapy on the basis of risk/benefit balance is […]

Biology

Creating a paradigm shift in plant breeding and plant phenotyping

Innovative plant breeding strategies accessing the beneficial relationships between soil microbes and plants could help develop varieties that are more resilient to climate change and soil conditions. Dr Omirou and Dr Fasoula at the Agricultural Research Institute, Cyprus, describe how moving away from conventional multi-plant, densely-grown field plots, and using innovative selection designs fitted to individual plants grown at ultra-wide […]

Arts & Humanities

Real-time societies: Maintaining control in the digital world

The rapid growth of digitisation is disrupting society profoundly. To secure a worthwhile future, we need to explore new approaches to govern complex socio-technical systems. Professor Johannes Weyer and his research team at Technische Universität Dortmund in Germany have developed SimCo, a simulation framework to investigate the dynamics of socio-technical systems like transportation or energy supply. This research examines how […]

Physical Sciences

Harnessing the photochemistry of bromine for sustainable manufacturing

Chemical production can be fraught with hazards. From explosions to toxic chemicals, making useful molecules often requires careful thought about how to make a process inherently safer. Researchers at RCPE (Austria) have developed an ingenious way to use the automated flow reactors manufactured by Corning SAS (France) to safely harness the photochemistry of bromine – a highly toxic, sludge-brown substance […]

Behavioural Sciences

The Wales Adoption Cohort Study: Childhood Risk and Resilience

Professor Katherine Shelton and Dr Amy Paine from the School of Psychology at Cardiff University have been conducting research examining the mental health of adopted children in Wales. This research tracks the children across a four-year period and assesses emotional, behavioural, and cognitive factors at different points in time. It also examines how parenting impacts adopted children’s mental health problems. […]

Business & Economics

Estimating Entrepreneurship: Do Current Metrics Work?

Entrepreneurship makes a vital contribution to economic prosperity. However, this activity is difficult to measure and compare between countries. One reason is that current metrics fail to distinguish between small-scale entrepreneurs without growth potential or ambition, which are common to developing nations – such as taxi drivers or street vendors – and entrepreneurial firms with high growth potential. Accordingly, Magnus […]

Thought Leaders

The Wolfson Foundation: 65 years of philanthropy

An independent grant-making charity based in Central London, The Wolfson Foundation has awarded some £1 billion to more than 14,000 projects in the UK from Cornwall to the Shetland Islands since its establishment in the 1950s. Chief Executive Paul Ramsbottom explains how academic decision-making is at the heart of what they do, and how they’ve adapted in the face of […]

Business & Economics

Digital Transformation in Financial Services: The Age of Fintech

FinTech, within the broader context of financial innovation, is disrupting the financial services industry in every aspect. However, its ability to thrive and scale, especially across borders, faces numerous challenges. Professor Anne-Laure Mention, Director of the Global Business Innovation Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, has made a significant contribution to our understanding of FinTech and Open Innovation, […]

Earth & Environment

Soil and groundwater contamination: An old and new issue needs to be solved

Dr Ming Zhang is an innovation coordinator at Geological Survey of Japan, AIST. Alongside his research group, he is advocating the importance of using interdisciplinary tools for sustainable remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater. Their research has shown that cost-effective and environment-friendly technologies such as the use of microorganisms to degrade organic contaminants and the use of minerals to immobilise […]

Thought Leaders

Digital Science: A more collaborative approach to research

Digital Science is a company that looks to improve old research practices with new tools and technologies. CEO Daniel Hook believes that investing in, supporting and promoting businesses and innovations that make the research process more open and efficient is the key to enabling researchers to make a real difference. Is it possible that in the future we might see […]