Japanese researchers have designed a series of fluorinated nanochannels, able to selectively remove salt and other impurities from contaminated water samples. With a purification rate three orders of magnitude greater than the current alternatives, the team is confident that this technology can be developed for global water treatment and desalination applications. ‘Fresh water is only […]

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has announced its plan to tackle persistent under-representation of women in the physical sciences and engineering by trying to address gender bias in peer review. Previous analysis by EPSRC in September 2020 revealed that female principal investigators (PIs) make up between 11 and 15% of the […]

Next-generation sequencing can be used to continually assess and monitor risks in patients with leukaemia, a new proof-of-principle study has shown. The new application for the technique is part of a revolution in cancer treatment that has come about as a result of the precipitous drop in the cost of sequencing. This method could become […]

Whether they were introducing materia medica into the medical curriculum at the universities, going out into the countryside to search for and study plants for themselves, leading students on field trips to do the same, establishing and developing botanical gardens, or creating their herbaria, the Renaissance humanist physicians in the first half of the sixteenth century always […]

Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) student Sarah Cen remembers the lecture that sent her down the track to an upstream question. At a talk on ethical artificial intelligence, the speaker brought up a variation on the famous trolley problem, which outlines a philosophical choice between two undesirable outcomes. The speaker’s scenario: Say a […]

For years, organizations have taken a defensive “castle-and-moat” approach to cybersecurity, seeking to secure the perimeters of their networks to block out any malicious actors. Individuals with the right credentials were assumed to be trustworthy and allowed access to a network’s systems and data without having to reauthorize themselves at each access attempt. However, organizations […]

An explosion and subsequent fire has killed six people and injured a further five at a chemical facility in Kocevje, Slovenia. The blast occurred on the morning of 12 May at a site operated by Melamin, which makes melamine-based polymers, resins and additives for a range of industries. The resultant fire was put out less […]

University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed a more accurate, less invasive technology that allows amputees to move a robotic arm using their brain signals instead of their muscles. Many current commercial prosthetic limbs use a cable and harness system that is controlled by the shoulders or chest, and more advanced limbs use sensors […]

With the key findings of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 finally published, scientific research looks to be flourishing in the UK, and over 90% of chemistry submissions are rated either internationally excellent (45%) or world-leading (49%). As departments wait to hear how their results affect funding, some policy watchers predict that the next REF […]

Humans are the only species on earth known to use language. We do this by combining sounds to form words and words to form hierarchically structured sentences. The question, where this extraordinary capacity originates from, still remains to be answered. In order to retrace the evolutionary origins of human language, researchers often use a comparative […]