While we may associate Messenger RNA (mRNA for short) with the COVID-19 pandemic vaccination programme, its study in fact began over 60 years ago.

Born in 1955 in rural Hungary, Katalin Karikó battled critics and scepticism for her research into mRNA for over 30 years before its role in the COVID-19 vaccination programme gained her recognition and, in 2023, a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In this interview, Karikó tells us about this journey and why she loves biochemistry, what it’s like to win a Nobel Prize, and how she would advise young scientists today.

Read Katalin's book: Breaking Through: My Life in Science

Read more in Research Outreach

Image credit for Thumbnail : OrionNimrod on Wikimedia commons

While the management of papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is guided by recurrence risk assessment, current methods cannot accurately predict disease recurrence.

Professor Oliver Bathe and his collaborators at the University of Calgary, Canada, have developed a test that includes genetic data linked to recurrence. Together, they identified three molecular PTC subtypes, allowing more accurate risk assessment to guide clinical decision-making and treatment.

Read more in Research Features

Read the original research: doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2023.1220617

The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for governments and their global stakeholders to reform the management processes of infectious disease outbreaks.

Dr Stella Chungong and Dr Landry Ndriko Mayigane of the Health Security Preparedness Department of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme are encouraging countries to implement early action reviews (EARs) for disease outbreaks to assess their vigilance and planning, the responsiveness of their health systems, and to better prepare for outbreaks.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read the original research: doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00167-5

Almost every city in the modern world faces the difficult challenge of understanding its citizens’ opinions and turning them into meaningful decisions.

Miloš Švaňa, a PhD student at Technical University of Ostrava, has decided to focus on this topic in his dissertation, with an aim to develop a framework for social media data analysis. By using fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory to help municipalities understand the needs of their citizens, Švaňa uses this information to inform better decision making.

Read more from Miloš in an upcoming chapter of Springer Fuzzy Management Methods.

For more on Fuzzy logic, visit the FMsquare Foundation website

The actions of humans are typically influenced by societal norms and mainstream trends that are passed down from generation to generation, shaping our life choices and behavioural patterns. 

Jean-Paul Close, founder of the STIR Foundation and AiREAS, experienced the breaking of heritage and the revival of core human values first-hand, after he chose to resign from an international executive job at a multinational company to stay close to his children. In his recent publications, he reflects on the voluntary shift towards ethical choices and sustainable development, using his personal experience and the transformation of a European city as examples.

Read the original article:  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41606-4_4

Read more in Research Features

Joint manipulation, applying a manipulation force to the spine to improve joint mobility and reduce pain, often comes with an audible pop. Patients and some practitioners often regard this audible sound as a sign of a successful treatment, but is that necessarily true?

Dr Rob Sillevis at Florida Gulf Coast University conducted a comprehensive investigation to find out whether this audible pop has a clinical significance and an actual or perceived benefit on the body. 

Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17622

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We increasingly rely on electronic communications across society. You may have heard privacy protection methods for those messages, such as end-to-end encryption. However, can that protection be guaranteed against governments, industries or bad actors?

How can we ensure privacy, but at the same time have the means to enforce laws and prevent malicious behaviour, and how do we develop cryptography law?

Professor Moti Yung and colleagues at the Privacy, Security, and Safety Research Group at Google LLC and at Columbia University, USA, have conceptualised ‘anamorphic’ cryptography,  and have also been recognised for their contributions to the so-called ‘Crypto Wars’ debate,

Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_2

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Helium nanodroplets are fascinating objects that can be used as microscopic laboratories to form new types of nanomaterials.

Researchers in COSY COST Action’s Working Group 4 , which recently celebrated its second anniversary, combine quantum, semiclassical and classical methods to investigate the physico-chemical properties of these droplets under extremely well-controlled conditions

Visit their site: https://cost-cosy.eu/

Read the original research:

• https://doi.org/10.1039/D3CP00489A
• https://doi.org/10.1039/D3CP01303K
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2024.07.425
• https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.013019

A nanoparticle is a tiny particle typically in the size range of one to one hundred nanometres. Nano-scale systems can exhibit unique quantum mechanical properties due to their size. 

The European Association for Cooperation in Science and Technology, which recently celebrated its second anniversary, focuses on the science of confined molecular systems. In this episode, we hear about their works to uncover the properties and behaviours of metal nanoparticles and clusters.

Visit their site: https://cost-cosy.eu/

Read the original research:

https://doi.org/10.1002/sstr.202400147

https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.202301517

 https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/cp/d2cp05843j

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscatal.3c02592

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021951723000842

https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c03923

On most days, a weather forecast is a convenient answer to simple questions, like : do I need an umbrella? How windy will it be?  

For high stakes questions around landslide hazards, how do we deal with slope failure forecast? And are there any new tools improving our capabilities without waiting to learn from another disaster?

Andrea Manconi, research scientist at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF joins us to discuss new satellite dataand methods to get ahead of the next slope collapse.

Read the original paper: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-3833-2024

Osteoarthritis is the most common disease in the world, characterised by the progressive degeneration of cartilage in the joints.

Dr Torbjörn Ogéus from the Stockholms led- & smärtspecialist clinic in Sweden, who is pioneering regenerative medicine approaches to treating osteoarthritis using patients’ stem cells. These treatments show significant improvements in pain and joint function, with possible cartilage regeneration, offering a potential cure and vast improvement in the quality of life for millions of people.

Read the original research: https://doi.org/10.26502/josm.511500152

Find out more in Research Outreach

Transportation is a key part of our life, either travelling ourselves or in transporting goods. Fossil fuels are still the most widely applied fuel for transportation purposes, given that the vast majority of engines are traditional combustion engines. The harmful emissions from these engines are well researched, and their direct or indirect contributions to climate change are well documented.

Alternative fuels from renewable sources such as biomass can be part of the solution. Dr Ruoyang Yuan and Dr Abdallah Abu Saleh at the University of Sheffield, UK, have been assessing emissions by alternative fuels. The team measured the production of oxides and soot from dimethyl ether and isopentanol, with promising results.

Read the original research: https://doi.org/10.3389/ffuel.2023.1296502

Find more in Research Features

For millennia, humans and horses have enjoyed a special relationship. Recent research shows that working with horses can improve human mental health and wellbeing.

Professor Ann Hemingway is part of a multidisciplinary team that has demonstrated that equine-assisted services can improve outcomes for families impacted by domestic abuse and mitigate the conditions that fuel it, and believes that the benefits of such an intervention could be delivered through virtual reality technology.

Read the original research : https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9060303

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We humans share over 99% of our DNA with each other. This means personalised therapies for diseases such as cancer or neurodegenerative conditions have to be tailored to the most minute differences between us - or even between our own cells. 

Professor Mark Ebbert of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky leads a lab focusing on isoforms of RNA - tiny, short lived molecules - that could open whole new avenues for detection, diagnosis, and treatments of otherwise incurable diseases.

Read the original research: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.06.552162

Find more at The Ebbert Lab

‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ – King Henry’s speech to rouse his troops before the Battle of Agincourt is one of the most famous in Shakespeare. But what does ‘Henry V’ tell us about theories of war in Elizabethan England?

Professor Anne-Marie Walkowicz of Ohio’s Central State University in the USA argues that the play explores the just war tradition – the counsel rulers should seek before engaging in military action – and class conflict.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read the original article : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-35564-6_14

What happens when CEOs are shielded by employment and severance agreements? Researchers from Singapore Management University, University of Hong Kong, Boston College, and led by Dr. Xia Chen put forward this critical question.  

The study investigates how CEO contractual protection impacts corporate debt contracting. With insights from a comprehensive analysis of loans from major publicly traded companies, the team explore how these protections can influence CEO behavior, risk-taking, and the financial terms imposed by debt holders.

Read the original research: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12664

As part of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, or COST Action, Working Group 2 of the COSY network focuses on developing efficient methods for describing the motion of molecules in confined systems.

Their work covers four key areas, ranging from toxic gas separation to tumour biomarker detection.

Find out more about the COSY COST Action network on cost-cosy.eu 

Read the original research:

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sstr.202400147
• https://doi.org/10.1039/D2CP04295A
• https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.3c02494
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molliq.2023.122828
• https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0146680
• https://doi.org/10.1080/00268976.2024.2341106
• https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202205198

CBD has emerged as a non-psychoactive agent in cannabis, stimulating a boom of boutique cannabis products into the medicinal and adult use markets .

The innovative CannaMetrix EC50 Array™  offers a solution to traditional chemical methods of testing cannabis potency, which often fall short in accurately capturing the complex interactions between cannabinoids and the human body.

Find more at  https://cannametrix.org/

Read more in Research Outreach

The global business landscape has undergone a profound transformation in recent decades. As sustainability, energy transition, and climate change have taken center stage, the need for a paradigm shift in strategic management has become increasingly apparent.
 
Jean Garner Stead and Edward Stead from East Tennessee State University argue that traditional strategic management models, particularly the Porterian models, are no longer sufficient in the face of modern challenges. They emphasize the necessity of a revolution in strategic management to a higher level that incorporates a spiritual dimension to address the pressing issues of our time.

Read more in Research Features

Read the original research: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06014-5_4

Traumatic brain injury remains a major cause of disability and death worldwide, and timely detection of the injury could lead to early intervention and save lives.

Professor Pola Goldberg Oppenheimer at the University of Birmingham, UK, has developed a novel handheld device that helps detect and classify brain injury by scanning the back of the eyes.

Read more in Research Features

Read the original research: doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg5431

Barcodes and QR codes have become ubiquitous sights in our current information age.

Soorya Annadurai, an independent researcher and software engineer at Microsoft in the USA, has developed a solution for these situations: audible barcodes, or ‘AuraCodes’, enabling the encoding and decoding of digital information through the medium of sound.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read the original research: doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3758-5_9

In an age of academies and free schools, secondary schools in England have never had more freedom over their admissions rules. But how do they decide who gets in and who doesn’t? And does it really matter?

These are the issues explored in this podcast, featuring Professor Simon Burges (Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol) and Dr Ellen Greaves (Honorary Research Associate at the University of Bristol). 

Discussing their research, Simon and Ellen shed light on the complexities of England’s secondary school admissions rules today and show that fairer admissions criteria could have a huge impact – on children, families and our whole society.

Learn more: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/secondary-school-admissions/

In conflict zones, businesses are widely seen as a positive force that promotes peace.

Dr Jay Joseph at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and colleagues have studied micro and small enterprises, identifying their often contradictory impact on a conflict zone.

Read more in Research Features

Read the original research: doi.org/10.1177/00076503221084638

It is believed that being more porous in nature will enable universities to create a talent pool of graduates with en entrepreneurial mindset and access to the very latest thinking, technology and innovation.

But is this enough to stem the tide of talent leaving Malaysia for opportunities elsewhere?

Featuring Professor Datuk Dr Paul Chan (HELP University), Professor Veronica Hope-Hailey and Professor Brian Squire (University of Bristol Business School)

Find out more about the 'Open for Business' podcast series. 

The government of Malaysia has set a target of making Malaysia a regional hub for startups by 2025. As of 2022, there were approximately 3,000 active startups in Malaysia, a stark increase from around 300 in 2013. However, whilst 30% of Malaysian startups have displayed consistent growth and profitability, about 1,800 startups struggle, with a 60% failure rate, especially within the first three years. The failure is majorly attributed to lack of market need affecting 42% or approximately 756 startups. How can universities provide a more robust route to market and accelerate a culture of research incubation and support for entrepreneurs?

Featuring Ts. Mohd Roydean Osman (Taylors University) and Simon Bond (University of Bristol)
 

Find out more about the 'Open for Business' podcast series.