- Catherine Zentile
Scientists have brought the world one step closer to the creation of the first artificial organism with the recent announcement of the creation of an artificial genome for the bacterium mycoplasma genitalium. The breakthrough is a major landmark in history, the switch "from reading the genetic code to writing it" but this new synthetic biology could be dangerous: is the world ready for this new technology and will it ever be?
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- Harriet Dickinson
It is the stuff of nightmares - a society so wound up in the legal system that no-one is allowed to tell you the truth, or that those with money control state censorship. However, this isn’t some John Grisham novel, this is the unfortunate state of the UK libel system today. Here, Harriet Dickinson finds out how it's impacting on the ability of scientists to state the facts...
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- Harriet Dickinson
What will the vaccines of tomorrow look like? Recent advances in crop technology mean that we are able to produce vaccines in plants. But would you eat a vaccine? Harriet Dickinson looks at the pros and cons of this novel method of drug delivery and asks whether this technology will be turning up on the menu any time soon...
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- Chris Smith
What causes cold sores and genital herpes, how do herpes viruses cause disease, why do herpes infections persist for life and how can cold sores and genital herpes be treated, and how does this all relate to Romeo and Juliet?
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- Charlotte Rusby
What do pop-up books and some of the most fundamental molecules of life have in common? Charlotte Rusby enters a world 100 million times smaller than the bookshelf to find out...
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- Alexandra Cheung
We tend to think of parasites as evolutionary cheats, surreptitiously taking advantage of their hosts’ hard work while they sit back and enjoy an easy life. But a closer look reveals that it's not all sun and sangria...
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- Chris Smith
What is a thunderstorm, how is lightning generated by clouds, how much energy is there in a lightning bolt, and could it be harnessed to power a town?
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- Harry Cliff
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland is now back in operation. By smashing particles together at close to the speed of light, it promises to deliver dramatic new insights into the fundamental nature of the matter. Here, Harry Cliff explains how the LHC works and what scientists hope to reveal as they unpick the fabric of the Universe we live in...
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- Robinson Fulweiler
Equivalent in land area to 14 Isle of Mans, or Rhode Island State twice over, the Louisiana Wetlands are one of the most important acquatic ecological sites in the world. But now they're disappearing, fast - an area the size of a tennis court slips into the sea every thirteen seconds. But what is this wilderness and what can be done to save it...?
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- Nick Heath
By now we’re familiar with apocalyptic visions of a scorched and flooded world ravished by global warming. But this gloomy prognosis is now set to take a nosedive beneath the ocean waves.
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