THE WORLD reference laboratory for foot and mouth disease (FMD) at Pirbright has won funding of £2million to boost its status as the global centre of expertise on the disease. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)…
Category: science news
Cern video confirms ‘new boson’ has been found
IN AN apparently accidental leak on the Cern website, the discovery of a new boson has been revealed. The scientific community is widely expecting an announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the God particle,…
Weekly news: Campaign backfire may have been intentional
NOW, call me cynical if you like, but I can’t help wondering if the unmitigated disaster that was this week’s launch of a campaign to motivate young women into science might have been what was actually wanted? You’ve doubtless heard…
Weekly news: Most scientific research is wrong
SCIENCE is an iterative process, a steady march away from ignorance and towards enlightenment, a gradual unveiling of the hidden truth of why things are the way they are. There are some mistakes along the way, and a lot of…
Mittermaier scores Agilent early career award
AGILENT Technologies has named Anthony Mittermaier, associate professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, as the winner of its fourth annual Early Career Professor Award. This year’s award focused on the field of structural biology using nuclear magnetic…
Microscopy reveals the inner architecture of cells
A RESEARCH project looking into microtubules in yeast cells has produced ‘stunning’ results, which could change our understanding of cellular misregulation disorders including Down’s, lissencephaly, and some cancers. The team, working at the University of Leicester, UK, has identified for…
Beetle video wins prize
PROFESSOR Javier Alba Tercedor, of the department of zoology at the University of Granada, Spain, has been awarded the Best Film of the Year at the SkyScan Micro CT Meeting in Brussels, Belgium. His one-minute film, ‘Micro-CT anatomical study of…
London Olympics dope lab given all-clear
THE ISSUE of sports doping gains importance with each new major international event, as athletes strive to gain the maximum performance from their bodies while remaining on the ‘legal’ side of the allowable limits for substances. The organisers of London…
Newsletter 16 March 2012: scientific journal favours pseudo-science
YOU don’t have to be psychic to share my delight at the publication of some ‘negative’ scientific results this week in PLoS One, the free-access online journal.There remains a bit of a stigma around so-called negative results, but as my…