Flashback

A birthday just isn’t a birthday without a good helping of nostalgia, so we thought we’d take a romp through the archives and look at some of the Highlights, lowlights and peculiarities that Laboratory News has covered over the past 40 years

September 1973

In 1973, the Medical Research Council (MRC) stated they spent £3.5 million on cancer research in the previous two years – and expected this to rise to £4 million in the next year. In 2009/10, the MRC said they spent a staggering £107.9 – a £104.4m increase.

“Every year nearly 120,000 people die because of cancer, a disease which is considered one of the major medical hurdles to be overcome,” said the report from September 1973.

September 1973

Nothing really changes – back in September 1973 scientists were warning man could endanger life on earth by increasing the temperature with waste heat. Sir Kingsley Dunham suggested that the temperature of bodies of water and the atmosphere might reach levels high enough to endanger life.

Back then, it was felt that existing forms of nuclear power were “probably not the long term answer”, but attitudes have changed today. Nuclear power is seen by many as the cheapest viable solution to help reduce fossil fuels and the UK plans to build 14 new nuclear power stations on seven sites in the coming years.

Today, rising temperatures and global warming are still in the news. In 1973, fusion was in the spotlight, but today scientists are still striving to come up with improved ways of generating alternatives to fossil fuels.

February 1995

Ever keen to help out with educating future generations of scientists, Laboratory News’ editor Alex Crawford was invited to submit a full application for a £25m grant for the National Science Centre (NSC) in February 1995. The centre aimed to mark the Millennium by providing a hands-on science centre to motivate young people to take up science, engineering and technology. The idea for the NSC emerged in February 1994 after a report by the School’s Curriculum and Assessment Authority suggested teaching science in schools should be cut by a massive 45% from about six hours to a mere three hours per week.

“With less time to be devoted to teaching science in schools, the need for the National Science Centre will be greater than ever,” said Alex, who was also NSC project director at the time.

February 1999

February 1999 saw the Lab News team reporting on Polly and Molly, the identical twins. It was impossible to tell them apart, so scientists from the Roslin Institute called in forensic back-up. Fingerprint experts Don Lock and Kenneth Gill took nose prints from the girls. Nose prints, what for? Well Molly and Polly were identical twin sheep, the first transgenic clones sheep carrying a human gene for a blood clotting factor.

Scientists hoped to prove that the identical twins had different patterns of whorls and ridges on their noses. “This is intriguing from our point of view, but from a scientific point of view, it won’t have that much meaning,” said assistant director of the Institute Dr Harry Griffin. “At least if we mixed up the ear tags, we would have a way of telling them apart.”

March 2000

March 2000 saw Laboratory News report on the discovery of a new state of matter at CERN – quarks. Now a generally accepted aspect of physics, this was the first time scientists have obtained experimental confirmation of quarks, which are thought to have existed 10 microseconds after the Big Bang. Today, scientists are still probing the early universe and are closing in on finding the elusive Higgs boson.

Keep an eye out for next months issue where we'll raid the archives once again