Unlike its predecessors, this round up doesn’t feature on a Friday. It features on a day when I’ve struggled to concentrate ever since I got in to work. I don’t want to launch into a full length blog when I’m not achieving anything else (what can I say, my Mum never let me go to Brownies if I hadn’t been at school either…) but equally having all of these tabs open is probably preventing me from achieving anything else.
So, without further ado and in no particular order:
- Tamsin Edwards writes a thoughtful piece in the Guardian about whether scientists should air their political viewpoints
- Scientists at Bristol University discover that the four kinds of virus causing Dengue Fever may be quite different to one another
- Six Turkish academics have been charged with terrorism after what appears to amount to nothing more than secularism
- Scientists from the United Arab Emirates have identified a mutation that gives plants reduced susceptibility to two fungal pathogens, Botrytis cinerea and Alternaria brassicicola.
- In case you missed it, scientists produced the world’s first synthetically grown beef burger this week. New Scientist unpacks the story.
- Groups in Australia and New Zealand have identified a potential new insectide, produced by bacteria. Along the way they showed that the bacteria keep this toxin in a special vesicle, allowing it to build up to high levels without damaging the micro-organism.
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