Features

Biological production by human design

July 8, 2014
Rapid advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to convert biomass to chemicals, fuels and materials, and produce new therapeutic drugs, all of which promise significant economic growth. Richard...

The starkest of contrasts

July 3, 2014
In mid-April, the latest volume from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published, assessing current and future action to reduce carbon emissions. Coincidentally this came out just as...

Widening the wheat gene pool

June 24, 2014
Our most dominant crop has a worrying lack genetic diversity. Here, we learn about a UK programme aiming to change this, whilst also improving the germplasm pool to yield better...

Liver cells…in 3D

June 17, 2014
With a breakthrough that led to the first ever in-vitro expansion of liver stem cells, researchers from the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute think they are on the brink...

The ‘middle men’ of knowledge

June 12, 2014
Researchers developing lighter materials and new catalysts are collaborating with UK companies to revolutionise our homes, cars and planes - but, says John Conti-Ramsden, we can’t rest on our laurels;...

Unleashing the hidden efficiency of your lab

June 10, 2014
Money for science is in short supply. Yet an untapped resource exists. These are the performance and financial benefits which are available from improvements in the efficiency of laboratories. The...

Scotland builds a biotech future

June 5, 2014
It’s no secret, globally our environment is changing. We’re seeing a rise in population, a rapid depletion of resources, increasing environmental pressures and climate change.  That’s why there’s never been...

Putting it all on the table

June 3, 2014
The competition to synthesise heavy elements is well underway, but are we creating them just because we can; what can we learn from these superheavy additions to the Periodic Table?...

Stand up and be counted

May 22, 2014
The CFC assay and colony counting is universally recognised as the gold standard for measuring the effects of radiation, chemotherapeutic drugs and other agents on cell viability. However, manually counting...

An experiment doomed to fail?

May 20, 2014
In schools and colleges laboratory work spices-up science, so why has Michael Gove now decided to neutralise them? If you want to hear Chemistry students fizz with enthusiasm drop in...

Lab Gloves – the myths and realities

May 19, 2014
They may be your constant companion, but do you really know them? Nick Gardner shatters some of the myths surrounding laboratory gloves Virtually every task in the laboratory entails the...

Shining a light on insulin

May 15, 2014
As a protein insulin is well known and it has now proved to be an ideal model to examine the oligomeric states of therapeutic proteins using light scattering techniques  ...

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