Sarah Cullen was eyeing the impending end of her postdoctoral position and wondering what to do next. She had earned a PhD in microbiology and immunology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2009, and was now studying the behaviour of breast-cancer cells. But she felt that it was time for a change: she knew that postdocs are jammed into the scientific pipeline every year but fill only a tiny number of faculty research jobs

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David Robert Grimes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, is an adamant defender of science, but the blog post he wrote in August caused quite a stir, even for him. Troubled by an upcoming vote by Dublin City Council on whether to stop fluoridating the city's water supply, in his post he implored councillors to heed evidence that fluoridated water helps to prevent and slow tooth decay. His contention that claims to the contrary are inflammatory, invalid and dishonest prompted critics around the world to call for his resignation, he says

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Automation is one of the hottest topics in transportation research and could yield completely driverless cars in less than a decade.

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By firing lasers into the sky, Claire Max has transformed the capabilities of current — and future — telescopes.

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A charcoal-rich product called biochar could boost agricultural yields and control pollution. Scientists are putting the trendy substance to the test.

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 The meeting last April was supposed to be a scientific review, but the scene looked more like boxers lining up for their turn at a punchbag. The target was Robert Jesse, who at the time was deputy undersecretary for health at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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Bande Dessinée sciences

Avec la fin de l’année s’approche le moment du bilan.Qu’a-t-on fait  ? Où en est-on  ? Moment propice au retour sur soi, pour l’individu comme pour le groupe. Entraînés par les travaux et les jours, nous oublions trop
souvent la raison ultime de notre activité, nous perdons de vue l’horizon, nous ne savons plus ce qui nous fait courir. Lire plus

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In 2011, Emmanuel Nnaemeka Nnadi needed help to sequence some drug-resistant fungal pathogens. A PhD student studying microbiology in Nigeria, he did not have the expertise and equipment he needed. So he turned to ResearchGate, a free social-networking site for academics, and fired off a few e-mails. When he got a reply from Italian geneticist Orazio Romeo, an inter­national collaboration was born. Over the past three years, the two scientists have worked together on fungal infections in Africa, with Nnadi, now at Plateau State University in Bokkos, shipping his samples to Romeo at the University of Messina for analysis. “It has been a fruitful relationship,” says Nnadi — and they have never even met.

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E-cigarettes are touted as a safe alternative to tobacco, but research has been inconclusive. In many respects, the modern electronic cigarette is not so different from its leaf-and-paper predecessor. Take a drag from the mouthpiece and you get a genuine nicotine fix — albeit from a fluid wicked into the chamber of a battery-powered atomizer and vaporized by a heating element. Users exhale a half-convincing cloud of ‘smoke’, and many e-cigarettes even sport an LED at the tip that glows blue, green or classic red to better simulate the experience romanticized by countless writers and film-makers. The only things missing are the dozens of cancer-causing chemicals found in this digital wonder’s analogue forebears.