Researchers say their creation has memory, which it can use to perform better by gaining experience
Researchers have found a soft and squidgy water-rich gel is not only able to play the video game Pong, but gets better at it over time.
The findings come almost two years after brain cells in a dish were taught how to play the 1970s classic, a result the researchers involved said showed “something that resembles intelligence”.
Continue reading...‘Climate change is a global problem. It needs that global level of collaboration,’ says Larry Marshall
The world needs a “climate armistice” between the US and China if net zero emissions are to be reached while Australia should hone its efforts on a few key areas where it has an unusual competitive edge, Larry Marshall, the former CSIRO chief executive, said.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s budget in which the Albanese government’s Future Made In Australia (FMIA) plans will probably be prominent, Marshall said the nation ought to focus any industrial support on sectors such as processing of lithium or vanadium or products that realistically scale up.
Continue reading...RMIT team develops method that could replace common lead-acid batteries, offering a safer and more recyclable alternative
An RMIT-led research team has come up with an innovative way to make greener, safer, recyclable “water batteries” that could replace common lead-acid batteries.
There are three key components that make up a battery: a cathode, an anode and an electrolyte. In common lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries, the electrolyte is a liquid chemical solution that, once inserted, cannot be easily recovered.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Study published in 2019 used blood and saliva samples from 203 Uyghur and Kazakh people living in Xinjiang capital
Concerns have been raised that academic publishers may not be doing enough to vet the ethical standards of research they publish, after a paper based on genetic data from China’s Uyghur population was retracted and questions were raised about several others including one that is currently published by Oxford University Press.
In June, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publisher, retracted an article entitled “Analysis of Uyghur and Kazakh populations using the Precision ID Ancestry Panel” that had been published in 2019.
Continue reading...Swiss firm’s withdrawal from Leqvio trial with NHS dents government plans to attract post-Brexit research and investment
The Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has ditched plans for a large clinical trial in the UK, in a further blow to the government’s efforts to make Britain an attractive place for research and investment after Brexit.
The company decided to scrap the Orion-17 trial of its cholesterol-lowering drug Leqvio, involving 40,000 patients in partnership with NHS England.
Continue reading...IPPR says extra £62bn a year needed to match global leader Israel after sharp decline since 2014
Britain’s plan to become a post-Brexit “science and technology superpower” has suffered a significant setback after a fall in research and development investment of almost a fifth since 2014, according to a report.
The Institute for Public Policy Research said the UK’s share of global investment in R&D projects – including in health and life sciences – had fallen sharply from 4.2% eight years ago to 3.4% in 2019 immediately before the Covid pandemic struck.
Continue reading...Pharmacogenomic testing could save the NHS money in the long term and reduce the risks of side-effects
Genetic testing to predict how individuals will respond to common medicines should be implemented without delay to reduce the risk of side-effects and ensure that everyone is given the right drug at the right dose, experts have said.
About 6.5% of UK hospital admissions are caused by adverse drug reactions, while most prescription medicines only work on 30% to 50% of people. A significant part of this is due to genetics: almost 99% of people carry at least one genetic variation that affects their response to certain drugs, including commonly prescribed painkillers, heart disease drugs and antidepressants. By the age of 70, about 90% of people are taking at least one of these medications.
Continue reading...Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company has come a long way since it fought off a takeover bid in 2014
Little expense has been spared at the giant glass and steel structure that sprouts from a once-vacant plot of land on the outskirts of Cambridge.
AstraZeneca’s £1bn new research and development centre houses 16 labs and 2,200 scientists, making it the biggest science lab in Britain along with the Francis Crick Institute in London, and the pharmaceutical company’s biggest single site investment to date.
Continue reading...Australia currently spends just 1.8% of GDP on research and development, lagging OECD average
Australia risks losing jobs to other countries if it fails to lift its below-average spending on research and development, a peak science body has warned, amid Scott Morrison’s vow to promote “technology not taxes” on climate policy.
Australia invests just 1.8% of its economic output in research and development, well behind the OECD average of 2.5%.
Continue reading...Antibiotic resistance is growing so fast that routine surgery could soon become impossible. But scientists are fighting back in the battle against infection
The first antibiotic that didn’t work for Debbi Forsyth was trimethoprim. In March 2016, Forsyth, a genial primary care counsellor from Morpeth, Northumberland, contracted a urinary tract infection. UTIs are common: more than 150 million people worldwide contract one every year. So when Forsyth saw her GP, they prescribed the usual treatment: a three-day course of antibiotics. When, a few weeks later, she fainted and started passing blood, she saw her GP again, who again prescribed trimethoprim.
Three days after that, Forsyth’s husband Pete came home to find his wife lying on the sofa, shaking, unable to call for help. He rushed her to A&E. She was put on a second antibiotic, gentamicin, and treated for sepsis, a complication of the infection that can be fatal if not treated quickly. The gentamicin didn’t work either. Doctors sent Forsyth’s blood for testing, but such tests can take days: bacteria must be grown in cultures, then tested against multiple antibiotics to find a suitable treatment. Five days after she was admitted to hospital, Forsyth was diagnosed with an infection of multi-drug-resistant E coli, and given ertapenem, one of the so-called “last resort” antibiotics.
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