We were invited to indulge our curiosity this week in Dublin which inspired me to launch my new weekly column, Curiosity Calling. This week, I’m sharing my thoughts on the world around us as well as the future… inspired by conversations and news articles.
Read more "Curiosity Calling: Bees, Boyle & Antibiotics"I’ve an article up on TheJournal.ie today. Some scientists have turned to crowdfunding to raise money for their work – with one TCD researcher raising more than €20,000.
Read more "You might help crowdfund an album – but what about some scientific research?"Imagine standing in the Gobi Desert with no life as far as the eye can see. A cloudless sky beating the sun’s rays down. You’ve been there for six weeks without a drop of water. But you are still there. This is reality for the Deinococcus species of extremophiles. These robust bacteria have evolved to […]
Read more "Living to the extreme"Death. Morbid and depressing to most but a topic that fascinated me in college. A natural part of my everyday life. Before you report me to the Gardaí as a serial killer, zoom down to the microscopic level. Billions of our cells die everyday and many have been programmed to do so. A fine equilibrium […]
Read more "The next chapter of apoptosis research"For the last few days of a recent hospital stay one of my roommates was a young women who was blind. She had the ability to recognise doctors, nurses and care workers almost instantly by their voice. One morning, she even knew a care worker who she had met years previously. The constant stream of different staff in […]
Read more "Seeing through sound"The closing event of the Science Gallery’s Surface Tension: The Future of Water took place last night. As the curtains are closed on this wonderful show, I interviewed Joanne Mac Mahon whose PhD research featured in the exhibition. Mac Mahon is part of a team in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering in TCD. Over the past ten […]
Read more "No water for a solar system"A talk on data analysis may not seem like the most exciting topic but it was one of the highlights of my recent trip to Berlin. Anastasia Ailamaki based in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) spoke about the gap between data collection and analysis. It was no surprise to anyone when Ailamaki mentioned […]
Read more "Mapping the brain: from molecules to mind"A few weeks ago, I wrote about an exciting area of neuroscience, Optogenetics, that had rapidly developed since I left college. Another area which has seen huge changes in the past few years is the study of human evolution, specifically the role played by Neanderthals in our past. In the typical picture of evolution, the Neanderthal is often depicted as […]
Read more "Human evolution: cavemen’s secret"