ResearchPod

40 years ago, the Alexander L Kielland oil platform suffered a catastrophic structural failure and sank into the North Sea, with 123 of the crew onboard losing their lives. Today, Dr Edwin France brings his decades of experience in welding engineering to bear on the report into the cause of the collapse, and describes his different conclusions. Read Dr Frances paper on the platform collapse here ,...

What makes a great work of music what it is? What integrates a given piece as one coherent whole? It may help to step back and ask what makes any given thing essentially itself. Fortunately, Aristotle can help us understand this question and its surprising ramifications. John MacAuslan’s research explains this search for a thing’s essence and how philosophy can help us gain further understanding o...

Air pollution directly contributes to a host of health concerns, and is of increasing concern in highly industrialised cities. For insights beyond air quality sensors installed by local government, Dr Andrew May has engaged with citizen scientists and STEM students to  gather vast quantities of data. Dr May and colleagues at Ohio State University are teaming up with local teachers and students to...

Despite best efforts, the origin of life on Earth remains an open mystery. In a recent analysis bridging physics, evolutionary biology and the philosophy of just what life is , Prof Stuart Kauffman suggests autocatalytic sets of energetically favourable molecules making each other, and in turn themselves, as the building blocks of life as we know it. His interview touches on the limits of Newtonia...

Dr Nanette Boyle leads a lab which uses genetic engineering to design photosynthetic organisms capable of producing sustainable fuels and chemicals . Her most recent work has been the creation of powerful computer modelling tools which are able to predict the growth and production of these organisms. This will ultimately speed up the development of the industrial scale algae-based biofuels. Read m...

Many toddlers and infants go through a phase of picky eating – this won’t come a surprise to anyone, and is probably an intimately familiar story to many listeners – however, what kind of effect does picky eating at so young an age have on later health and habits? How is that affected by changing diets? And what’s the best way to encourage children to try something new? Read more about the researc...

Many of us will have heard the phrase "To err is human, to forgive divine", but personally internalising and scientifically measuring that forgiveness between people and as religious experiences is an ongoing field of research. Prof Frank Fincham has spent the last few years working on that field, looking at the relationship those who seek forgiveness, those who grant it, and those seek...

The melt and recession of glaciers has been an environmental concern since the early 1900s, and make up a large part of the measurement and communication of climate change today. The study of biogeochemistry and microorganisms on arctic and alpine glaciers requires specialised sensors and inventive approaches to data gathering, which Dr Liz Bagshaw of Cardiff University has just returned from test...

Professor Jack Gallant from the University of California, Berkeley, tells us how his team are building an atlas to the semantic system and revealing how our cerebral cortex turns language into meaning. Read more about this research at Research Features Original research available here

Heart disease comes in many shapes and sizes – the most serious cases requiring serious interventions to save the patients life, and none are more serious than a heart transplant. However, transplantation requires the availability of not just a heart, but a closely matched one to fit the body and biology of the recipient. If no donor hearts are available, the new generation of mechanical blood pum...

Life in a modern, interconnected world has delivered miraculous advances in communications, technology and trade. It is also becoming widely acknowledged that the last few decades of globalised commerce and finance has, by design, transferred large amounts of power and profit out of small communities, towards distant and unaccountable actors, while the waste generated in manufacture and transport...

Since entering the public sphere in 2016, Brexit has been an issue shaped by, and at whims of, media coverage. That contents of that coverage have morphed over the last 3 years, as specific terminology, personalities and deadlines have arisen, and media discussion of todays Brexit news is very different from that prior to the referendum. Beyond the ideology and policy in any article or broadcast,...

Dr Gunnell’s work focuses on the collection, management and preservation of vertebrate fossils while his research aims to understand the origin and diversification of modern mammalian groups by study of their fossil record. Dr Boyer’s work focusing on the evolution of primates uses the fossil record as a key resource for understanding the interplay between form and function in evolutionary context...

Professor Floris Ernst’s research investigates the potential for using robots and novel 3D-imaging technology to carry out ultrasounds within the soft tissue of the human body. Professor Ernst completed his PhD at the University of Lübeck, investigating motion prediction and correlation algorithms for use in robotic radiosurgery. Following this, he worked as a software engineer at an engineering c...