news 2020

Researchers from the University of Glasgow's College of Science & Engineering are sharing in new funding for adventurous, high-risk research. Four projects from three Schools have received support from the £25.5m New Horizons fund, administered by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC).

By Gustav Oberdorfer Computational design of novel protein structures is a promising tool to make superior biological materials with tailor-made properties, new pharmaceuticals or complex fine chemicals. Over the last two years research in my group focused on developing methods to design and functionalize de novo proteins.

By Cornelia Kröpfl BA MA 30 years ago, data security was a niche topic. Today, researchers at TU Graz are laying the foundations for a completely new way of thinking about security. Including future developments. Not so long ago, the mobile phone was primarily used to store contact data. Today, smartphones know where we are and what media we read.

The world's smallest primate reveals the incredible preservation of our visual system through millions of years of evolution. Primates process visual information in front of their eyes, similar to pixels in a digital camera, using small computing units located in the visual cortex of their brains.

Tutoring programmes and storybooks can help improve children's attainment in maths, according to a new evidence review led by UCL researchers. The evidence review, published today by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and written by a team from the UCL Institute of Education, the University of Brighton, Loughborough University and Ulster University, synthesises the best international evidence about the teaching and learning mathematics for children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 (between the ages of 3 and 7).

A mathematician from Cardiff University has developed a new method for processing large volumes of COVID-19 tests which he believes could lead to significantly more tests being performed at once and results being returned much quicker. Dr Usama Kadri, from the University's School of Mathematics, believes the new technique could allow many more patients to be tested using the same amount of tests tubes and with a lower possibility of false negatives occurring.

Math puzzle resolved by translating it into satisfiability problem Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists and mathematicians have resolved the last, stubborn piece of Keller's conjecture, a geometry problem that scientists have puzzled over for 90 years. By structuring the puzzle as what computer scientists call a satisfiability problem, the researchers put the problem to rest with four months of frenzied computer programming and just 30 minutes of computation using a cluster of computers.

Mathematicians have analysed COVID-19 infection rates from all US states. The results suggest public health officials shouldn't relax restrictions until surge periods are demonstrably over. They also used the method to look at Australian infection rates. When applied to Victoria, the new methodology shows the state in its second COVID-19 surge, as expected.

Closing schools and shielding the over 60s has less of an effect in reducing Covid-19 transmissions and death rates than reducing workplace interactions A 30% reduction in workplace interactions is forecasted to result in a 62% reduction in new infections and a 54% reduction in new deaths by the end of 2020 compared with no additional interventions Enabling employees to work from home is more effective than keeping children off school, or shielding the over 60s in reducing new Covid infections, new deaths and total deaths.

Engineers at EPFL and local startup Intuitive Therapeutics have developed software that can produce optimized surgical plans for Gamma Knife radiosurgery. Doctors at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) began using the software in July. Radiosurgery is a kind of radiotherapy where doctors administer a high dose of radiation to diseased tissue with extreme precision, and in one go rather than over several sessions.

Engineers at EPFL and local startup Intuitive Therapeutics have developed software that can produce optimized surgical plans for Gamma Knife radiosurgery. Doctors at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) began using the software in July. Radiosurgery is a kind of radiotherapy where doctors administer a high dose of radiation to diseased tissue with extreme precision, and in one go rather than over several sessions.

Scientists have found that a physical property called 'quantum negativity' can be used to take more precise measurements of everything from molecular distances to gravitational waves. We've shown that filtering quantum particles can condense the information of a million particles into one David Arvidsson-Shukur The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, Harvard and MIT, have shown that quantum particles can carry an unlimited amount of information about things they have interacted with.

An international team of scientists led by The Australian National University (ANU) researchers has developed a new robust type of light technology that could lead to cheaper and faster devices. The team created a laser that is immune to fabrication imperfections and external disturbances, such as unwanted light reflections and scatterings.

If physical distancing measures in the United States are relaxed while there is still no COVID-19 vaccine or treatment and while personal protective equipment remains in short supply, the number of resulting infections could be about the same as if distancing had never been implemented to begin with, according to a UCLA-led team of mathematicians and scientists.

Seasonal fluctuations drive the dynamics of many infectious diseases. For instance, the flu spreads more readily in winter. Two scientists from the University of Nantes 1 and the CNRS 2 in Montpellier have developed a mathematical model to predict the risk of the emergence of an epidemic, depending on the time of the year at which the pathogen is introduced.

Sperm cells moving their long tail to swim through the body in search of an egg is a familiar image, but a fully 'powered' tail may not be the key to success, according to a new UK study which could be crucial for improving the outcomes of assisted fertility treatments. Propulsion of sperm and how the cell uses its tail to move through the thick fluids of the reproductive tract to reach and fertilise an egg has been well studied.

What makes ships mysteriously slow down or even stop as they travel, even though their engines are working properly? This was first observed in 1893 and was described experimentally in 1904 without all the secrets of this "dead water" being understood. An interdisciplinary team from the CNRS and the University of Poitiers has explained this phenomenon for the first time: the speed changes in ships trapped in dead water are due to waves that act like an undulating conveyor belt on which the boats move back and forth.

A new mathematical principle has been designed to combat AI bias towards making unethical and costly commercial choices. Researchers from the University of Warwick, Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne) and Sciteb Ltd have found a mathematical means of helping regulators and businesses manage artificial intelligence (AI) systems' biases towards making unethical, and potentially very costly and damaging, commercial choices.

MBPhD researcher Sam Ereira (UCL Medical School) shares his research on brains and discusses how we distinguish between thinking about our minds versus those of others. We are highly sensitive to people around us. As infants, we observe our parents and teachers, and from them we learn how to walk, talk, read - and use smartphones.

The software behind a major Imperial study warning of a potential US coronavirus resurgence has received a Codecheck endorsement. The key findings in the 'Report 23' from Imperial College were reproducible. Dr Stephen Eglen University of Cambridge The independent review of the Imperial COVID-19 Response Team's code for Report 23 was led by Dr Stephen Eglen, Reader in Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.