• 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...

  • H5N1 controversy from a scientist's perspective

     What's all the fuss about? Flu isn't so bad, right? Seasonal flu is an annoyance for most people but, in the young or elderly, or immunocompromised individuals, it can still be fatal. Each year, there are around 4,000 deaths attributed to flu in the UK, despite these people having access to...

  • 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...

  • Stealth Tactics of the Black Death Bacterium

     Yersinia pestis holds the dubious title of the world's most devastating bacterial pathogen. While its glory days of the Black Death are thankfully a thing of the past, this pathogen remains a threat to human health to this day. A recent paper published in PNAS describes how the...

  • Guru Magazine Issue 10

    In their words, "Guru Magazine is an exclusively crowd-sourced, free science-themed magazine. Released bi-monthly, it’s designed to be read and understood by regular people (like you and I). This means, like Wikipedia, it is shaped by its readers and dependent upon its contributors." Issue 10 is...

  • 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...

Saturday, 26 November 2016

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The Missing Three Million

Posted by Kathryn at 11:37 • 0 comments
In Agra’s slums, community volunteers are visiting the houses one-by-one and asking the occupants a simple question: “Have you been coughing for more than two weeks?” Of the ten million new cases of TB every year, one-third remain invisible to the public health authorities. India currently holds the dubious title of World’s...

Sunday, 20 November 2016

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Blame the Europeans

Posted by Kathryn at 15:44 • 1 comments
You know when you drive an unfamiliar car and you have to find your way round all these knobs and buttons to make the car go in the direction you want it to go in? M. tuberculosis has the same problem when it comes to the human immune system. This can make things tricky as it’s a pathogen that practices immune subversion rather...
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