Latest Articles

We spoke to Cristina Paulino, Assistant Professor in high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) at the University of Groningen, to learn about the role cryo-EM plays in her group's work in the study of membrane protein structure and function.

Sustainability is a hot topic as the world’s population continues to rise, bringing with it a demand for increased food production. This article takes a look at the Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation (Agri-EPI) Centre that was set up by the UK government as part of the Industrial Challenge Strategy, to innovate technology in agriculture.

The human brain sequesters many mysteries. How does cognitive development take place? How does it help us learn? What causes brain diseases? An exciting venture involving researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Princeton University is preparing to unleash a $500-million supercomputer, dubbed Aurora, in the pursuit of these answers.

A system capable of translating brain activity into synthesised speech by decoding the movements of muscles involved in vocalisation has shown its potential in a proof-of-concept experiment conducted by researchers at the University of California San Francisco.

One of the most exciting fields opening up as a result of efforts to identify new or unforeseen hazards to our waterways and effective methods for treating contaminated wastewater and industrial effluents is the study of nanomaterials and nanotechnology; both as an emerging contaminant in industrial effluents, and a potentially useful tool for water filtration and purification.

A significant minority of major depressive disorder patients don’t respond to currently available antidepressant medication. A newly approved treatment, based on the "club drug" ketamine, could change that. In a session at the British Neuroscience Association’s Festival of Neuroscience 2019, the potential mechanisms of ketamine’s antidepressant action were put under examination.

The healthcare sector is always looking for new ways to optimize delivery, cut costs and offer more accurate results. AI has solutions to each of these challenges.

Given the complexity of cancer, it’s arguably unlikely that single molecules will work as clinically meaningful biomarkers for cancer. Today, biomarker discovery involves detecting patterns – characteristics or phenotypes that can be measured and monitored throughout a patient’s journey. Here, we look at two approaches being explored in this evolving field.

When developing diagnostic tests or evaluating results, it is important to understand how reliable those tests and therefore the results you are obtaining are. By using samples of known disease status, values such as sensitivity and specificity can be calculated that allow you to evaluate just that.

Running in parallel with advances in 3D cell culture is the growing use of human cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. Researchers are interested in testing drugs in the most physiologically relevant models possible, so it was only a matter of time before these two approaches converged – providing optimized systems for disease modeling and drug toxicity testing.