Professor David Nutt was famously sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by the UK’s Labour Government at the time, apparently for being rational about scientific evidence. He now chairs the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, and is head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging, Imperial College London. He is…
Last week we published an evaluation by Gabriele Sorci of the Université de Bourgogne, on a paper in The American Naturalist titled “Hidden consequences of living in a wormy world: nematode-induced immune suppression facilitates tuberculosis invasion in African buffalo.” African buffalo can be infected by nematodes and tuberculosis. The nematodes suppress the host Th1-type immune…
It’s not that I “don’t really care for music”—I do, very much—it’s more that I have a serious lack of talent, or indeed understanding. I can read music, and at a push tune up my lovely (but seriously underused) Tanglewood and crank out a recognizable tune, given some sheet music and a following wind. Music…
Bruce Cronstein is a Section Head in Immunopharmacology & Hematologic Pharmacology, in our Pharmacology and Drug Discovery faculty. Here he’s talking to Sarah Greene about his work on adenosine receptors. Like many things in science, it’s taken us off in odd directions Bruce is known for showing that anti-inflammatory drugs such as methotrexate work by…
In this three minute video, Gordon Fishell at the New York University School of Medicine tells us how for the past ten years his lab has been trying to understand interneuron diversity in the cortex: how brains can expand from ten or so cardinal cell types to the >100 types that populate the mature cortex,…
if you make a discovery, there’s no other way to gain the confidence that you can make a discovery Martin Raff (read his profile at The Scientist) gives advice to young scientists. He says that it’s important to do something great early in your career, to boost confidence; which means placing yourself in a position…
What do Jonathan Ross, Brian Cox, Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre have in common? Along with comic book artists, television presenters, astrobiologists, science journalists, chess champions and even an ex-Member of Parliament, they’re all featured in the 2011 Geek Calendar, a celebration of British nerdiness (and no, I’m not going to get in the geeks…
Our final clip of Elizabeth Blackburn, recorded at the recent EMBO 2010 meeting in Barcelona. Here, Professor Blackburn talks about the possible mechanisms that link telomere length to cardiovascular disease. F1000: What potential (molecular) mechanism could link telomeres and cardiovascular disease? Liz Blackburn (paraphrased): One of the things we’ve been looking at is the effect…
The Royal Colleges were furious, they said the didn’t need any help on bioethics from anybody, and the research councils were not too happy either. Following on from the announcement of the Lasker award winners, a video from Web of Stories featuring Sir David Weatherall. In this clip he talks about setting up, for the…
In the second of three short clips featuring Elizabeth Blackburn, recorded at the recent EMBO 2010 meeting in Barcelona, Edyta Zielinska asks what is the link between telomere length and cardiovascular disease. Again, we had trouble with the pianist (not a problem normally associated with scientific research), so a synopsis of what Dr Blackburn said…
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