A Quantum Conundrum
How secure do you feel on the internet? Like you’re dangling from a dangerously high precipice by the straps of your dungarees, while some piece of malevolent code holds scissors to the straps? Or...
Category: Snippets
And the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to…
Congratulations to John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser on being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of the brain’s navigation system. How does our brain create maps of...
Molehills to Mountains: The Problems of Scaling Up Chemistry
This snippet is (kind of) a sequel to The Disconnection Approach. Excellent news! The new drug that you (the pharmaceutical company) have painstakingly screened, synthesised, purified and tested in clinical trials has proven to...
The Eyes Have It
Evolution has undeniably given us many gifts with which to conquer the world – legs fit for running away from danger, opposable thumbs for making and using tools, eyes to perceive our environments and...
Magpies Don’t Favour Shiny Objects
Magpies like to steal shiny, metallic objects to make their nests, right? That’s how the age-old story goes. Rossini even penned an opera on the subject. The birds, part of the crow family, are...
Quantum Pigeonholes
Here’s a simple idea: You have three pigeons and only two pigeonholes. If you put the pigeons in the pigeonholes you’ll end up with at least one hole that contains two pigeons. Right? Now...
Concussion Crisis
With Glasgow playing host to a major upset in rugby sevens and Commonwealth Games history, we would hope that such a spectacle would increase participation in sports not so often in the public eye....
The Righteous Drug Smugglers
Of all the challenges facing the pharmaceutical treatment of brain diseases, the most fundamental is also one of the most difficult: getting drugs into the brain. Our brain comes with its own bouncer, the...
