Mars needs moms (and not scientists)

I’ve never, ever seen anything quite like the film 'Mars Needs Moms'. Maybe I should have known in advance that  a Disney animation was unlikely to do a good job of portraying mothers in a realistic manner (their mother-prototype tends to be of the dead variety). But I was surprised by just how anti-feminist this film...

Thirteen things about doing a science PhD...

...that I wish I could tell my younger self: 1. It’s not going to be easy or, at least, it won’t feel easy. At some point, you’re probably going to start doubting everything about yourself, from your ability to generate high-quality data to whether that old lady on the bus moved seats because the stench of E. coli DH5a has...

The Fastest Cells in the World

On your marks, get set…and polymerise your actin microfilaments. The results of the first ever World Cell Race are in and crawling into first place was a fetal bone marrow stem cell with a blistering top speed of 5.2 microns per minute. Fifty labs from around the world fielded athletes, who competed over a distance of 400...

Lab on a Chip Technology to Investigate how Bacteria Move

Awaking in the middle of the night, every tiny sound—a creaking floorboard, the drip of a tap, the quiet breathing of the murderer hiding in the wardrobe—can appear magnified. Yet, during the day, when background noise is higher, we don’t notice these same sounds. It’s not that they aren’t there, or even that other sounds are drowning...

Development of Empathy in Infants

Babies are notoriously selfish creatures - either they're asleep, happy, or they're screaming. It isn't until the age of two that children begin to realise that other people have their owns wants and needs. However, a recent study from researchers at Durham University has demonstrated that infants as young as six-months old...

Dark Matter: What’s Science Got to Hide?

Scientific data is more freely available than ever. But does the push for openness help or hinder science? A panel debate at Imperial College London on 6th December sought to answer this question, launching the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine—a special issue focussing on science, transparency and free speech....