Esophageal cancer rates in men have increased by 50 percent since the early 1980s, with new United Kingdom cases reaching almost 6,000, according to the latest figures which show that the number of men diagnosed with esophageal cancer has rapidly risen from around 2,700 cases three decades ago to 5,740 cases in 2012.

Given the changes in population size this equates to a 50 percent increase from 15 to 23 cases per 100,000 people. In women, the increase is much smaller with around 10 percent more now developing the disease compared to the 80s. Now 2,802 women are diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  Esophageal cancer rates in women for 2012 are 9 per 100,000. 

Currently different data formats between research centers pose a challenge to oceanographic researchers, but a new project is going to make marine data sets more easily accessible to researchers worldwide. 

The ODIP II project will use NERC’s vocabulary server to ‘translate’ between these different data semantics. ODIP II is a collaboration between the USA, Australia and the EU. By the time it is complete, in May 2018, it aims to have developed a means of seamlessly sharing and managing marine data and coordinating the existing regional marine e-infrastructures.

A Silicon (Si) quantum dot (QD)-based hybrid inorganic/organic light-emitting diode (LED) that exhibits white-blue electroluminescence has been created.

A hybrid LED is expected to be a next-generation illumination device for producing flexible lighting and display, and this is achieved for the Si QD-based white-blue LED. 

The Si QD hybrid LED was developed using a simple method; almost all processes were solution-based and conducted at ambient temperature and pressure. Conductive polymer solutions and a colloidal Si QD solution were deposited on the glass substrate. The current and optical power densities of the LED are, respectively, 280 and 350 times greater than those reported previously for such a device at the same voltage (6 V).

Office workers should be on their feet for a minimum of 2 hours daily during working hours, recommends the first ever UK guidance designed to curb the health risks of too much cumulative sitting time, and published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This daily quota should eventually be bumped up to 4 hours a day, breaking up prolonged periods of sitting with the use of sit-stand desks, standing based work, and regular walk-abouts, it says.

The guidance, which evaluates and distils the available evidence, was drawn up by a panel of international experts, at the behest of Public Health England and a UK community interest company (Active Working CIC).

University of Adelaide researchers have discovered cerebral palsy has an even stronger genetic cause than previously thought, leading them to call for an end to unnecessary caesareans and arbitrary litigation against obstetric staff.

In an authoritative review published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, members of the Australian Cerebral Palsy Research Group, based at the University of Adelaide's Robinson Research Institute, argue that up to 45% of cerebral palsy cases can have genetic causes.

I dissected a Tyrannosaurus rex in front of television cameras.

That may be the most surreal sentence I’ve ever written. So let me explain. I’m part of a team that built a life-sized model of Tyrannosaurus rex and then cut it up. The spectacle is a bloody, gory two-hour television special called T. rex Autopsy. The premise may seem absurd. But this is a whole new way of communicating science to the public, and it has been one of the highlights of my career.

I've talked before about how life on present day Mars could be vulnerable to Earth life. If only humans could be sterilized of other life, like a plant seed. But sadly, we can't do that, and it would kill us to try. Recent ideas, and experiments in Mars simulation chambers suggest that there may be liquid water habitats on the surface of Mars. They may be no more than droplets of water a few millimeters in diameter, but these still are, as Nilton Renno said, "Swimming pools for a microbe".

Unless you are a wealthy elite, an electric car is not a viable option because gasoline still rules when it comes to energy density, meaning electric has a more limited range, and solar energy is not close to replacing fossil fuels yet so the environment is not winning.

Archaeologists have found evidence of an ancient gold trade route between the south-west of the UK and Ireland, which would mean people were trading gold between the two countries as far back as the early Bronze Age, 2500 B.C.

The finding was made after measuring the chemical composition of early gold artifacts in Ireland and discovering that the objects were actually made from imported gold, rather than Irish. The gold is most likely to have come from Cornwall, which means the symbiotic link between Ireland and England is even farther back then believed.


Lunula and discs. Credit National Museum of Ireland

Physics at the UAB have found the “formula” to construct a quantum thermometer with enough precision to detect minute fluctuations in temperature in regions as small as the inside of a cell. The research appears today in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Researchers from the UAB and the University of Nottingham, in an article published today in Physical Review Letters, have fixed the limits of thermometry, i.e., they have established the smallest possible fluctuation in temperature which can be measured. The researchers have studied the sensitivity of thermometers created with a handful of atoms, small enough to be capable of showing typical quantum-style behaviours.