Henk-Jan Guchelaar knows all too well the serious problems that the side–effects of medication can cause. As a professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he has spent the last two decades trying to get the link between medicine and our genes recognised more widely. The stories he hears from patients and their families bring home … Read more
Live vaccines can give health effects beyond just protecting us from a specific disease and may even help us combat other infections such as Covid-19, according to Christine Stabell Benn, a professor in global health at the University of Southern Denmark. We often think about vaccines protecting us against a specific disease – training the … Read more
by Fintan Burke Using light as an energy source, photosynthetic microalgae can be used to produce products like biofuels and cosmetics. But algae grown in a reactor block out the light on which they feed. New reactor designs could solve this problem and help the industry move forward. Photosynthetic algae – tiny algae that use light … Read more
by Caleb Davies For Stephan Borrmann, a day of high altitude detective work begins early. He wakes at about 05:30am in a hotel in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. After a quick breakfast, he and his team are driven to the city’s airport. Their job is to prepare a converted Russian espionage plane so that it can … Read more
Cultivating mushrooms produces a lot of waste. For every kilogram of mushrooms produced, about three kilograms of soil-like material containing straw, manure and peat is left behind. In the EU, this results in more than 3 billion kilograms of waste per year. Managing this waste is a challenge. Although it is rich in organic matter, and therefore useful as … Read more
by Gareth Willmer A slow drive in the dead of night through the forests of northwestern Costa Rica helped home in on the target. Dr Mirjam Knörnschild and her team had equipment with a microphone hooked to the top of their car to take recordings of bats. ‘Local people probably thought we were crazy or lost,’ … Read more