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Dr Richard Davies: The Forgotten Pioneer of Blood Research and University Reform

Dr Richard Davies was an 18th century physician whose bold ideas spanned medical science, public health, and university reform. Yet, his name is little known today. From discovering features of inflammation in blood, to proposing a national system to control cattle plague, his work prefigured modern approaches to medicine and governance. Nevertheless, his calls for change often fell on deaf ears, and his contributions were overlooked or appropriated by others. Dr Margaret DeLacy revisited Dr Davies’ remarkable career, exploring how a forgotten doctor helped shape the future of medical thinking.

Professor Yves R. Sagaert | Demand Planning Excellence: The Case for Incorporating Macroeconomic Leading Indicators

Today’s demand planning landscape is increasingly defined by radical uncertainty. Professor Yves R. Sagaert from the research group Predictive AI and Digital Shift at VIVES University of Applied Sciences is one of many scholars who posits that to survive and thrive in this new normal, demand planners must consider incorporating leading macroeconomic indicators into their demand forecasts. This field of research is vital for better understanding how the early warning signals in leading macroeconomic indicators can be used to inform precision forecasting and minimise forecast-reality variance.

Stroke: A Global Challenge in Need of Innovation

Stroke is the third leading cause of both death and disability worldwide, but unfortunately, current diagnostic tools are unsatisfactory. Dr Roustem Miftahof and Dr Alexander Hermann at Advanced Biosimulation Technologies LLC, USA, are overcoming the limitations of existing diagnostic tools with the development of the Neuro-Glia-Vascular Unit Engine. This transformative tool for clinicians and biomedical researchers provides patient-specific health insights with the potential to improve care not only in stroke but across a range of neurological disorders.

Dr Shigetaka Hayano | The Rubber Revolution: Cracking the Code for Tire Recycling!

Traditionally, rubber waste was nearly impossible to recycle due to crosslinked sulphur bonds. But a team of researchers led by Dr Shigetaka Hayano from Zeon Corporation, in Japan, have achieved a groundbreaking feat in rubber recycling. Using mild conditions for the reaction, scientists have overcome the unfavourable cross-linked structure and have achieved recovery of rubber’s original monomers. This process restores cyclopentene monomers with 90% efficiency, allowing old tires and industrial rubber waste to be chemically recycled into high quality materials. If scaled up, this innovation could revolutionise waste management, reduce environmental pollution, and enable a circular economy for rubber production.

Prof Doron Lancet | Reproducing lipid micelles permit early Darwinian evolution

The origin of life has puzzled science and philosophy for thousands of years. While the prevailing scientific narrative is of an ‘RNA world’ or ‘polymers first’ approach, Prof Doron Lancet’s group of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, present an alternative, describing a ‘lipid world’ scenario as a plausible origin for life, in which lipid micelles (simpler structures than cell-like vesicles) could have been nanoscopic protocell precursors. Core to the theory is that these micelles could exhibit catalysis and compositional self-reproduction, passing information through the mixture of their lipid components rather than through a genetic sequence.

Dr Sebastian Rabien | Making Membrane Mirrors for Future Space Telescopes

Mirrors play a key role in space telescopes, but to keep increasing the scale of this technology, mirrors need to be light and compact, so they can be transported in spacecraft, but also able to be adaptively corrected and controlled to ensure their accuracy. Dr Rabien and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in Germany, have developed a technique to make extremely thin and lightweight mirrors, which can then be controlled with adaptive optics, making them a potential solution for larger space telescopes.

Dr Alyson J McGregor | Uncovering the Gender Gap in Medical Research: How Sex Differences Impact Healthcare Outcomes

Medical research has historically focused predominantly on male subjects, leading to dangerous gaps in our understanding of how diseases and treatments affect women. Dr Alyson McGregor from University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville has devoted her career to addressing this critical issue, highlighting how biological sex differences impact health outcomes. Her work demonstrates that ignoring these differences can have life-threatening consequences and advocates for more inclusive research practices to ensure safe and effective healthcare for everyone.

How Food Environments Shape Our Eating Habits

How we eat dramatically impacts our health, yet millions of Americans live in ‘food deserts’ – areas with limited access to fresh, nutritious food. Recent research reveals that solving this crisis requires looking beyond just physical access to food to understand how our entire community environment shapes our dietary choices. Through a series of pioneering studies, Dr Terrence Thomas and colleagues at North Carolina A&T State University have been investigating how different aspects of our food environment influence what we put on our plates. Their findings suggest that creating lasting change requires reimagining how communities engage with food at every level.

Probing Electron Dynamics in the Ultrafast Regime

In the atoms that make up the matter around us, negatively charged particles called electrons have properties such as spin and orbital angular momentum. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg have developed a theoretical framework which allows them to simulate the dynamics of the spin and orbital angular momentum of electrons in materials when probed with an ultrafast laser pulse. Using this framework, they are able to simulate different materials and improve our understanding of dynamics on an atomic scale.

Seeing Beneath the Surface: Exploring Deltaic Reservoirs with Augmented Reality

In the Aínsa Basin of the Spanish Pyrenees, the Mondot-1 well was drilled, cored, and fully logged to capture a detailed record of a long-buried ancient river delta system. Dr. John D. Marshall, Dr. Jürgen Grötsch, and Dr. Michael C. Pöppelreiter with co-workers at Shell International used this core to trace how sediments once flowed across the landscape, and were deposited under shifting tectonic conditions. The team employed augmented reality and interactive virtual displays; these innovative tools offer new ways to explore subsurface depositional systems, and are particularly useful in locations where physical access to the core is difficult, or no longer possible.

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Medical & Health Sciences Latest

Earth, Environment & Agricultual Sciences

Dr Shigetaka Hayano | The Rubber Revolution: Cracking the Code for Tire Recycling!

Dr Shigetaka Hayano | The Rubber Revolution: Cracking the Code for Tire Recycling!

Traditionally, rubber waste was nearly impossible to recycle due to crosslinked sulphur bonds. But a team of researchers led by Dr Shigetaka Hayano from Zeon Corporation, in Japan, have achieved a groundbreaking feat in rubber recycling. Using mild conditions for the reaction, scientists have overcome the unfavourable cross-linked structure and have achieved recovery of rubber’s original monomers. This process restores cyclopentene monomers with 90% efficiency, allowing old tires and industrial rubber waste to be chemically recycled into high quality materials. If scaled up, this innovation could revolutionise waste management, reduce environmental pollution, and enable a circular economy for rubber production.

Physical Sciences & Mathematics Latest

Dr Sebastian Rabien | Making Membrane Mirrors for Future Space Telescopes

Dr Sebastian Rabien | Making Membrane Mirrors for Future Space Telescopes

Mirrors play a key role in space telescopes, but to keep increasing the scale of this technology, mirrors need to be light and compact, so they can be transported in spacecraft, but also able to be adaptively corrected and controlled to ensure their accuracy. Dr Rabien and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in Germany, have developed a technique to make extremely thin and lightweight mirrors, which can then be controlled with adaptive optics, making them a potential solution for larger space telescopes.

Engineering & Computer Science Latest

Dr Sebastian Rabien | Making Membrane Mirrors for Future Space Telescopes

Dr Sebastian Rabien | Making Membrane Mirrors for Future Space Telescopes

Mirrors play a key role in space telescopes, but to keep increasing the scale of this technology, mirrors need to be light and compact, so they can be transported in spacecraft, but also able to be adaptively corrected and controlled to ensure their accuracy. Dr Rabien and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in Germany, have developed a technique to make extremely thin and lightweight mirrors, which can then be controlled with adaptive optics, making them a potential solution for larger space telescopes.

Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Latest

Dr Richard Davies: The Forgotten Pioneer of Blood Research and University Reform

Dr Richard Davies: The Forgotten Pioneer of Blood Research and University Reform

Dr Richard Davies was an 18th century physician whose bold ideas spanned medical science, public health, and university reform. Yet, his name is little known today. From discovering features of inflammation in blood, to proposing a national system to control cattle plague, his work prefigured modern approaches to medicine and governance. Nevertheless, his calls for change often fell on deaf ears, and his contributions were overlooked or appropriated by others. Dr Margaret DeLacy revisited Dr Davies’ remarkable career, exploring how a forgotten doctor helped shape the future of medical thinking.

Life Sciences & Biology Latest

Stroke: A Global Challenge in Need of Innovation

Stroke: A Global Challenge in Need of Innovation

Stroke is the third leading cause of both death and disability worldwide, but unfortunately, current diagnostic tools are unsatisfactory. Dr Roustem Miftahof and Dr Alexander Hermann at Advanced Biosimulation Technologies LLC, USA, are overcoming the limitations of existing diagnostic tools with the development of the Neuro-Glia-Vascular Unit Engine. This transformative tool for clinicians and biomedical researchers provides patient-specific health insights with the potential to improve care not only in stroke but across a range of neurological disorders.

Education & Training Latest

Dr Alyson J McGregor | Uncovering the Gender Gap in Medical Research: How Sex Differences Impact Healthcare Outcomes

Dr Alyson J McGregor | Uncovering the Gender Gap in Medical Research: How Sex Differences Impact Healthcare Outcomes

Medical research has historically focused predominantly on male subjects, leading to dangerous gaps in our understanding of how diseases and treatments affect women. Dr Alyson McGregor from University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville has devoted her career to addressing this critical issue, highlighting how biological sex differences impact health outcomes. Her work demonstrates that ignoring these differences can have life-threatening consequences and advocates for more inclusive research practices to ensure safe and effective healthcare for everyone.

Psychology & Neuroscience Latest

Can Your Personality Shield Your Mind From Ageing? How being open to new experiences might protect against cognitive decline as we age

Can Your Personality Shield Your Mind From Ageing? How being open to new experiences might protect against cognitive decline as we age

Many of us have witnessed the troubling effects of ageing on the mind in older friends or family members – the forgotten names, the misplaced keys, the struggle to solve problems that once seemed simple. For decades, scientists have accepted cognitive decline as an inevitable part of growing older. But what if our personality could protect us from some of these changes? A remarkable 25-year study by Dr David Sperbeck, a neuropsychologist at North Star Behavioral Health Hospital in Alaska, has uncovered compelling evidence that certain personality traits might act as a shield against age-related cognitive decline.

Business, Economics & Finance Latest

Professor Yves R. Sagaert | Demand Planning Excellence: The Case for Incorporating Macroeconomic Leading Indicators

Professor Yves R. Sagaert | Demand Planning Excellence: The Case for Incorporating Macroeconomic Leading Indicators

Today’s demand planning landscape is increasingly defined by radical uncertainty. Professor Yves R. Sagaert from the research group Predictive AI and Digital Shift at VIVES University of Applied Sciences is one of many scholars who posits that to survive and thrive in this new normal, demand planners must consider incorporating leading macroeconomic indicators into their demand forecasts. This field of research is vital for better understanding how the early warning signals in leading macroeconomic indicators can be used to inform precision forecasting and minimise forecast-reality variance.

Latest Issues
Scientia Issue #153 | Exploring Our World, Our Past, and Our Future

Scientia Issue #153 | Exploring Our World, Our Past, and Our Future

The latest issue of Scientia showcases recent advances in research and technology across diverse fields. These riveting articles provide fascinating insights into our world, our past, and our future, and underscore the intertwined relationship between science and society.

In Education & Training, we highlight developments across the educational system, and in Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, we share insights from the study of history and the present day, as well as advances in economics and data science. In Earth & Environmental Sciences, we are reminded of the necessity of water for life on Earth and the need for sustainable agriculture. The section dedicated to Physical Sciences & Mathematics explores the exciting applications of this field to space exploration, nuclear energy, telecommunications, and healthcare. In Medical & Health Sciences, preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer emerges as a core theme. Finally, in Life Sciences & Biology and Psychology & Neuroscience, we can read the latest insights into ethnic and genomic diversity, and how psychology can inform our understanding of the challenges faced by vulnerable groups.

Scientia Issue #150 | Big Ideas for a Better World

Scientia Issue #150 | Big Ideas for a Better World

Big Ideas for a Better World This riveting issue of Scientia showcases some of the biggest new ideas across science, research, and technology. While we face many challenges, from climate change to cancer, epidemics to economic...

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