‘Wild Things’ is the latest venture from The House of Improv. In this improvised comedy, the team address human interactions with an endangered animal which is conjured out of thin air by the audience. In the Tuesday performance, this animal was the creaky-tailed hippopotamus. Set in Creaky-Tailed Hippopotamus Town, the play followed the stories of…
Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society and 2009 Nobel Prize winner, is already well known in the scientific community for his publications about the ribosome. What I wasn’t expecting however, was that his part-memoir, part-popular science book contained far more about the pace, people and progress of science than could ever be gleaned from…
In the 1982 classic Bladerunner, synthetic beings on the boundary between life and artifice known as replicants serve as humanity’s slaves. Made from the same organic material as us, they are expertly bioengineered to be improved versions of the humans they are based on. Masterful manipulation of life in this way could be a reality…
Antibodies are proteins generated by the immune system capable of recognising short peptide fragments (known as epitopes) with a remarkably high degree of specificity. This specificity makes them a powerful tool for research, allowing us to identify, track, and quantify specific proteins in a wide range of assays. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) can be generated for…
The Bern town clock chimes: once, twice, three times. Yet another patent on clocks sits at the desk, this one claiming originality for sending time through telephone lines. It was the age when electromechanical devices were starting to be used to synchronise distant clocks. From the comfort of the patent office, a young Albert Einstein…
It’s not about the science. In 1983, a gene from Agrobacterium (a plant-infecting bacterium) was successfully inserted into a plant cell, marking a ‘coming-of-age’ moment for plant genetic engineering. The resulting possibilities seemed endless; pest-resistant, self-fertilising and nutritionally-fortified crop varieties. But relatively little of this technology has been implemented on a global scale. Casual viewers…
The voice of an Ancient Egyptian priest who fell silent over 3000 years ago has been brought back to life thanks to a team of scientists from Royal Holloway and the University of York. The group, part of the ‘Voices of the Past’ Project, created a 3-D printed model of the man’s vocal tract constructed…
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is spreading at an alarming rate, yet the antibiotic industry is only shrinking—could a pre-antibiotic era return as our future? Antimicrobials revolutionised medicine. Before antibiotics, the average life expectancy was 47 years. Infections such as pneumonia could easily be fatal, and to put it bluntly, a scratch could kill. There is no…
Since China first announced the emergence of a new virus, 2019-novel coronavirus or 2019-nCOV, the pathogen has spread and international cases have emerged. This virus is in the same family as both the common cold and the more deadly MERS and SARS viruses. Governments and health organisations are now mobilising to contain the spread of…
After a three year long Brexit limbo, with two leaders, five rejected deals and an increasingly polarised population, Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill was passed on 20th December with a majority of 124, leaving the UK on course to leave the EU by the end of January. The United Kingdom prides itself on the breakthrough contributions…
