Wildfires in Mediterranean Europe will increase by 40% at 1.5°C warming, say scientists

Oct 04, 2018 15:56 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

Europes Mediterranean regions have strong sunshine, bright blue seas, beautiful beaches, and pretty holiday houses immersed in pine forests that provide welcome shade. It sounds very inviting, but such a scenario is also...

2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: a turning point in the war on cancer

Oct 04, 2018 15:55 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

There are moments in the history of scientific achievement that benchmark the end of an era and the beginning of a new phase of reality for mankind. The significance of these inflection points is sometimes readily...

2018 Nobel Prize for physics goes to tools made from light beams – a particle physicist explains

Oct 04, 2018 15:43 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

Arthur Ashkin. Niklas Elmehed. Nobel Media, CC BY-SA Gerard Mourou. Niklas Elmehed. Nobel Media, CC BY-SA Our world is full of light and we depend upon it to power life on our planet. So it is appropriate to...

And then there were three: finally, another woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics

Oct 04, 2018 15:17 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

Three, only three, is the number of women who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in the 117-year history of the prize. Donna Strickland, aged 59 and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, in...

50 years old, '2001: A Space Odyssey' still offers insight about the future

Oct 04, 2018 15:01 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

Watching a 50th anniversary screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I found myself, a mathematician and computer scientist whose research includes work related to artificial intelligence, comparing the storys vision of the...

How the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry have transformed research and saved lives

Oct 04, 2018 14:27 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 has been awarded to three researchers for their work on harnessing the power of evolution to create compounds that are of benefit to humanity. One half of the nine million Swedish kronor...

Exomoons: astronomers report first ever discovery

Oct 04, 2018 14:27 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

In Star Wars VI we first meet the Ewoks living on the Forest Moon of Endor. The planet Endor itself is a gas giant, but the Forest Moon is a habitable world, peopled by small furry sentient creatures. While we may not be...