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Interview

Assessing the health of an entire ocean is an 'extraordinarily ambitious agenda', says Prof. J Murray Roberts. Image credit - Hannah Roberts
interview | environment
06 February 2020

Q&A: To protect the Atlantic, we first need to understand it

The Atlantic Ocean is under threat from fishing, fossil fuel extraction and deep-sea mining, and the onus should be on these industries to prove that their exploitation is sustainable rather than requiring scientists to come up with reasons to protect it, says Professor J Murray Roberts, a marine biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Cities need to set the rules of the game when it comes to innovative mobility services such as e-scooters and shared bikes, says Karen Vancluysen. Image credit - Polis network
interview | transport
03 February 2020

Q&A: ‘Cities need to roll out carrots and sticks to solve the last-mile problem’

How people and deliveries get to their final destination is currently making urban environments harder places to live, and cities need to solve this ‘last mile problem’ by using a combination of ‘carrot and stick’ measures, according to Karen Vancluysen, secretary general of Polis, a network of European cities and regions working on sustainable innovative transport solutions.

Glaciers are typically found close to where people live and changes can directly affect people's lives, says Prof. Kääb. Image credit - Andreas Kääb
interview | environment | frontier research
06 January 2020

'Most ice on Earth is very close to melting conditions'

We need to understand how glaciers are shrinking in order to better adapt to climate change impacts such as changes to water supply, landslides and avalanches, says Professor Andreas Kääb, a glacier expert from the University of Oslo in Norway. 

Gene editing researchers should act responsibly and not be driven by fame or patents, says Prof. Christiane Woopen. Image credit - Reiner Zensen
interview | health
17 December 2019

We need to talk about CRISPR

We need an active public debate on the ethics of gene editing technology to realise its potential and prevent it being used in nefarious ways, for example by the military and amateur scientists, and to take cultural differences into account, according to Professor Christiane Woopen, executive director of the Centre for Ethics, Rights, Economics and Social Sciences of Health (CERES) at Germany’s University of Cologne.

Placing heat tolerant corals in reefs won’t save them indefinitely but only buy us more time, says Dr James Guest. Image credit - Dr James Guest
interview | frontier research | environment
16 December 2019

Matchmaking corals from different colonies could reduce bleaching events

Breeding together corals that have naturally high heat tolerance and planting them on coral reefs could increase the reefs’ resilience to climate change and reduce the impact of bleaching events, according to Dr James Guest, a coral reef ecologist from Newcastle University, UK. He is studying this ‘assisted evolution’ approach to coral conservation and examining the risks associated with it.

Sir Peter was one of three winners of this year's Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. Image credit - Courtesy of Ludwig Cancer Research
interview | health | frontier research
02 December 2019

Nobel prize winner: Oxygen regulation discoveries are starting to lead to new anaemia, cancer drugs

Drugs that activate or block the body’s oxygen-sensing machinery to treat conditions such as anaemia in patients with chronic kidney disease and cancer are being made possible because we now understand the way that cells respond to oxygen deprivation, according to Sir Peter Ratcliffe, one of three winners of this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

One of the main goals of exoplanet research is to work out the frequency of potentially habitable planets, according to Dr Gillon. Image credit - ©ULiège / JLWertz
interview | space | frontier research
04 November 2019

'We've found dozens of potentially habitable planets - now we need to study them in detail'

From the first discoveries of planets beyond our solar system in the 1990s, we now know of thousands of alien worlds, some of which could even be habitable to life as we know it. Now we need to detect more of these exoplanets and study them in detail, says astronomer Dr Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège in Belgium, who was involved in one of the most important exoplanet discoveries to date.

The peat fire in the field experiment in Dumai, South Sumatra, continued to burn after three days of torrential rain. Video/image credit - Yulianto Sulistyo Nugroho
interview | environment | frontier research | security
31 October 2019

In a picture: ‘Not enough people are aware of this monster’

Professor Guillermo Rein, a fire scientist, tells Horizon why smouldering peatland fires are so dangerous and why we know so little about them.

Giving people graphical information can do more to correct misperceptions than text-based information, says Prof. Reifler. Image credit - Alice Vergueiro/Abraji
interview | social sciences | frontier research
22 October 2019

Why people’s misperceptions about climate change, vaccinations are so hard to shake

The most powerful source of misperceptions about important issues such as immigration and climate change are false beliefs rooted in people’s political or social preferences, but having people who question authority is also important for a society, according to Professor Jason Reifler, a political scientist at the University of Exeter, UK.

Non-antibiotic drugs may also have a role to play in promoting antibiotic resistance, Dr Typas says. Image credit - Dr Nassos Typas
health | interview | frontier research
03 October 2019

Antibiotic resistance: How did we get here?

Finding ways to enlist the bacteria living in our bodies to defend against infections while better understanding their role in promoting antibiotic resistance are key to fighting this growing problem, says Dr Nassos Typas, a microbiologist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

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