Category Archives: News
Cell body clocks are altered in depression
Our biological rhythms are tuned to the day-night cycles, light-dark cycles in which we live because the cells of our body have an in-built timekeeping capacity. Each cell has an internal clock, driven by the cyclic expression of certain genes, which in turn is kept in time by a master clock in the brain. [...]
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Initiatives: Making New Scientists
Elizabeth Mooney reflects on the opening of the new Cambridge Science Centre Cambridge has a reputation as a world-class centre for excellence in scientific research and some of the most significant discoveries in modern times have been made here. It therefore seems obvious that as a city we should seek to inspire younger generations to [...]
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News: Issue 27
New Twists in the Tale of DNA Cambridge scientists have discovered fourstranded ‘quadruplex-helix’ DNA in the year of the 60th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s ground-breaking publication on the DNA double-helix. Led by Giulia Biffi, the research group from Professor Shankar Balasubramanian’s lab at the Department of Chemistry reported in Nature Chemistry that these ‘G-quadruplexes’ [...]
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Supermarkets seriously misinforming customers about health risks
In an open letter to ten supermarket CEOs, early career researchers have called on supermarkets to stop misleading customers about health risks. They accuse the supermarkets of playing on unfounded fears about health effects from GM, MSG, parabens and aspartame. The rumoured health effects are not supported by scientific evidence, the Voice of Young Science [...]
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Music is my drug
A new study reveals that pleasurable music engages reward-related neurocircuitry. Scientists found that discovering a new favourite song activates similar reward circuitry involved in the pleasure we get from delicious food or drugs like cocaine. In the study, conducted by Salimpoor and colleagues, 19 volunteers were played 30 second samples of 60 songs they [...]
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Genetic flags identify cancer causing genes
More than 1000 scientists have been involved in a recent study that has discovered over 80 genetic markers associated with cancer. The study is so far the largest of its kind, involving 200,000 participants, half of whom were cancer sufferers. It has doubled the known number of genetic markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms [...]
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Bacteria commit suicide to protect others
Escherichia coli bacteria commit suicide to protect other bacteria, even when they don’t share many genes with them; a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences shows. The Kin-Selection theory explains why some organisms sacrifice their own reproduction in order to help other organisms reproduce. A common misinterpretation of this theory [...]
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Captain, there’s something on the radar
The Royal Navy have just unveiled their new radar system and the Artisan 3D boasts statistics stats that would impress tech-addicts everywhere. The manufacturers BAE Systems claim that the new device can detect objects as small as a tennis ball up to 25km away even when they’re travelling at three times the speed of [...]
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A stroke of genius
Feeling the pinch? This expression shows how negatively we view the sensation of being pinched. Scientists have known for some time about the existence of specific neurons, cells of the nervous system, dedicated to detecting this nasty event. Research from Caltech has identified mouse neurons specifically receptive to stroking Showing that stimulating certain cells [...]
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Extensive glacial retreat in the Mount Everest region