Author archives: Invited Researcher

Why our universe is made up of matter and not antimatter

Why our universe is made up of matter and not antimatter

Particle physicsPhysics

By Invited Researcher

Why didn’t the universe annihilate itself moments after the big bang? A new finding at Cern on the French-Swiss border brings us closer to answering this fundamental question about why matter dominates over its opposite – antimatter. Author: William Barter, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, University of Edinburgh Much of what we see in everyday life […]

Statistics and the world of online chess drama

Statistics and the world of online chess drama

Statistics

By Invited Researcher

Author: Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, Professor of Statistics, University of Toronto As a mild-mannered statistics professor, it’s not often that I get contacted directly by the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, much less regarding allegations of cheating and malfeasance among world champions. But that’s precisely what happened last summer. Erik Allebest, CEO of the world’s largest […]

Mitigating health risks through targeted microbial interventions

Mitigating health risks through targeted microbial interventions

BiotechnologyChemical engineeringFood processingMicrobiologyMolecular biology

By Invited Researcher

Biogenic amines (BAs) are nitrogenous compounds formed primarily by microbial decarboxylation of amino acids. In food products, they can accumulate to levels that pose health risks, including histamine poisoning and hypertensive crises due to tyramine ingestion . Fermented foods, particularly cheeses, are significant sources of BAs due to their complex microbial consortia and the metabolic […]

Bending Ohm’s Law: How symmetry-broken crystals rewrite the rules of electronics

Bending Ohm’s Law: How symmetry-broken crystals rewrite the rules of electronics

Condensed matterMaterialsQuantum physics

By Invited Researcher

When Georg Ohm wired up pieces of copper in 1827, he struck a rule so robust that it still underpins every phone and supercomputer on Earth: double the current, double the voltage. Simple, linear, universal—or so we thought. Over the past decade physicists have discovered that this bedrock principle crumbles the moment a crystal loses […]

How pterosaurs learned to fly

How pterosaurs learned to fly

EvolutionGeosciences

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Davide Foffa, Research Fellow in Palaeobiology, University of Birmingham; Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, Royal Society Newton International Fellow in Palaeontology, UCL, and Emma Dunne, Assistant Professor in Paleobiology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Ever since the first fragments of pterosaur bone surfaced nearly 250 years ago, palaeontologists have puzzled over one question: how did these close cousins of […]

Environmental DNA: Biodiversity data (like love) is in the air

Environmental DNA: Biodiversity data (like love) is in the air

BiologyEcologyGenetics

By Invited Researcher

DNA sequencing is getting cheaper than ever. This, coupled with advances in speed and portability, are allowing us to apply deep sequencing beyond the lab to environmental substrates, and analyse this eDNA to gain information and monitor biodiversity at a time where it is being lost at an unprecedented rate. This environmental DNA can be […]

Why the hunt for animal languages has left us empty-handed

Why the hunt for animal languages has left us empty-handed

Language

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Anna Jon-And, Director of Centre for Cultural Evolution, Senior Lecturer in Portuguese, Stockholm University and Johan Lind, Senior Associate Professor in Ethology, Linköping University Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don’t? It’s one of the most enduring questions in the study of mind and communication. Across all cultures, humans use richly […]