European science conversations
by the community, for the community
Dr. Brian Cahill, Programme Manager of the TRAIN@Ed MSCA COFUND project at the Institute for Academic Development of University of Edinburgh and member of EuroScience board, explains the reason why it is paramount for young researchers to broaden their skills and horizons, but also to contribute to the policy making process that influences their future.
The newly established Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the United Nations will work towards developing a strong international framework on setting global standards for governance and oversight of human genome editing.
The coming years will see the market for electronic devices and logic boards grow by additional leaps and bounds. But as electronics and semiconductors infiltrate new industries and products, designers and manufacturers are always on the hunt for better and smarter ways to manufacture these vital components.
Since the vote of the UK public to leave the EU in June 2016, there has been extensive discussion about the negotiations surrounding Brexit. This article assesses the impact of Brexit on European research. The UK is home to many excellent research institutions Read more […]
Social developments triggered by digitalisation, big data or artificial intelligence, curing diseases by modifying the genome of organisms and developing high-tech solutions to slow down climate change – these are just a few topics of enormous societal Read more […]
This article reviews the Nobel history since inception which shows that the Prizes in science conferred on individuals in the first 50 years are shifting to the Prizes being shared. It is,in part, because the science has become more complex, collaborative, expansive, and expensive. With the critical need for teamwork to tackle Big Science, we recommend that the policy of “no more than three” sharing the Prize be loosened on case by case basis and the nomination be made open for scientific organisations. We also suggest concrete steps for improving the gender gap among the Nobel Laureates. This necessitates proactive nominations of Nobel worthy work done by women and making structural changes in Nobel committees toward better gender ratio. Finally, our analysis shows that the U.S. is emerging as a Nobel Super Power leading to a divide not only with European countries but the world at large.
On the EU level there are the anti-plagiarism policies not defined in the higher education sector, although plagiarism-related projects are being supported.
The scandal of regenerative medicine surgeon Paolo Macchiarini and his deadly plastic tracheas made world news. Yet this human abuse, which started at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, was just a part of a much bigger horror story. The suffering and deaths of other trachea transplant patients of Macchiarini and his collaborators, those who received a decellurised cadaveric trachea, is much less known. I focused my reporting on it, bringing back to memory all those dead patients which the hospitals in London, Florence and Barcelona pretend never existed. Presently, 62 patients were scheduled to be treated with decellurised cadaveric trachea in two phase 1 clinical trials in UK and one EU-funded phase 2 clinical trial, all led by former Macchiarini partner, UCL laryngologist Martin Birchall. But now, all 3 clinical trials are not going anywhere.
Since the General Assembly changed statutes in Copenhagen in 2014 we are electing new Governing Board members for a four-year period. It will not mark a really new beginning of EuroScience but it does provide a good opportunity to reflect on what EuroScience stands for, all the more so since EuroScience now exists for twenty years.
EuroScientist editor has left and this is an occasion for the magazine to make some changes and reinvent itself. While we will not change the goals and the mission of EuroScientist we will focus in the coming months on anticipating the debates at ESOF and debates on FP9. In addition, we will merge the EuroScience Newsletter into EuroScientist. Homo Scientificus Europaeus (HSE) will also be integrated in EuroScientist website in the following weeks. We will also invite new contributions from you whatever you think is useful and valuable for the discussions in the wider science community and beyond that among stakeholders in science and innovation.
The next Science March will take place in Washington, Göttingen and many other cities throughout the world on the 14th April 2018. This research activism movement born last year is set to gain momentum. It is a reminder to the science community that researchers need to make their voices heard
There are so many innovations waiting to serve scientists that it is quite incredible they have not been adopted sooner. In this insightful opinion piece, Simon Bungers, co-founder of labfolder, an electronic laboratory notebook for researchers, outlines his vision on how scientists’ lives will be transformed by wider adoption of solutions supported by artificial intelligence and the emergence of the likes of blockchain-based solutions to gain greater data reproducibility.
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