As the European Research Council reaches its landmark 5000th grant award, the UK should reflect on how a ‘no’ vote would impact on its scientific strengthsThe European Research Council (the ERC) today announces the award of its 5000th grant to Dr Iva Tolic, a researcher in Croatia based at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. Tomorrow there will be a celebration of this significant milestone in the European Parliament, with the participation of Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas and the ERC’s President Jean Pierre Bourguignon. It is a symbol of the success of the ERC that the European Parliament takes this landmark so seriously. And it is as a symbol of the excellence of European scientists that Iva Tolic is being celebrated.The ERC has, in its relatively short existence, rapidly gained a reputation for funding innovative cutting-edge science, what they refer to as ‘frontier science’. Its funds are much sought after; awardees receive much kudos from their awards. However the distribution from grants is uneven across the EU, with the newer accession states struggling to compete with the western countries, not least because of their less well-funded and less well-established scientific infrastructures. So it is particularly pleasing to see a Croatian scientist being celebrated. Tolic represents a typical European scientist, having worked in a number of European labs (in Denmark and Italy, as well as Croatia) as well as at Harvard during her career. Such mobility is viewed as beneficial in terms of research experience, although occasionally it can cause problems for those who, for personal reasons, are unwilling or unable to move around. She has won numerous awards including being chosen by the top biology journal Cell as one of their ‘40 under 40’ for 2014. In other words, a star. Continue reading...

Australian and US scientists capture on video each stage of death of a human white blood cell, revealing the dying cells apparently try to alert their neighboursIn a world first, Melbourne scientists have captured on video each stage of death of a human white blood cell, a phenomenon never seen before and which reveals the cells apparently try to alert their immune system allies that they are dying.White blood cells are the critical, disease-fighting cells of the immune system which fight bacterial and fungal infections, as well as viruses. Continue reading...

Tory MP says sexist comments by the scientist which sparked an online storm were ‘light-hearted’ and that he should be restored to the Royal SocietyThe Nobel laureate who resigned from two scientific organisations after making controversial comments about women should be reinstated, says Boris Johnson.

Lucy Tonge was 13 when she developed narcolepsy after having the Pandemrix jab. She is appealing against the rejection of her compensation claimWhen Lucy Tonge started drifting off in front of the television as a 13-year-old, her parents put it down to typical teenage lethargy. And when she developed a strange habit of slumping forward when she laughed, her mum told her: “Stop doing that stupid thing when you laugh. It makes you look silly.” But she couldn’t.It was only when she started collapsing with no warning that her family sought medical advice that led to a diagnosis of narcolepsy. Soon afterwards, Tonge discovered that her sleeping disorder was very likely to have been triggered by the swine flu vaccine, which she had received in 2009 a couple of months before her symptoms first emerged. Continue reading...

uMotif can send clinical information in advance to doctors, remind people when to take their medication and even monitor their moodDavid Bedford suffers from Parkinson’s disease and can sometimes forget to take one of the five different pills he needs to keep the condition in check. Worse, when he makes half yearly visits to the hospital for a check-up, he cannot remember the details of his daily routine.Three years after he was diagnosed with the disease, he now uses a mobile phone app to remind him when to take the medication and to act as a diary of how his illness affects him. This attention to detail means that daily log is available before the short meetings he has with his consultant every six to nine months. Continue reading...

Don’t be fooled by the dinosaurs: the Jurassic films are really about chaos theory and the unpredictability of existenceThe German novelist Thomas Mann once dismissed those befuddled by his cryptic magnum opus, The Magic Mountain, by saying that all they needed to do was read the bloody book twice. I feel similarly about the Jurassic Park franchise, whose third sequel opened this week. Only I needed to watch the original about seven times to realise that this wasn’t just a guilty pleasure – a big blockbuster action film I loved watching again and again – but in fact an intricately constructed masterpiece with a serious message.There’s a scene, fairly early on in the movie, I had missed until I watched it again on Boxing Day last year. Our human heroes land for the first time on Isla Nublar, home to the eponymous planned amusement park. The helicopter hits turbulence and the passengers are told to fasten their seatbelts, but Dr Grant, a slightly grumpy palaeontologist played by Sam Neill, realises that he is stuck with two buckle ends – the female parts of the mechanism – and no tongue. He improvises and ties them into a knot. Continue reading...

In May, 134,000 saiga died in the space of just two weeks. I spoke to E.J. Milner-Gulland, a conservation biologist at Imperial College about the probable causeLast month I wrote a short piece for Nature on the alarming and as-yet unexplained mass mortality of saiga antelope in Kazakhstan in May. I spoke at length to E.J. Milner-Gulland, a conservation biologist at Imperial College London and chair of Saiga Conservation Alliance. Last week, the charity launched an appeal to raise urgent funds in support of their efforts. Here is an edited transcript of the interview.Henry Nicholls: What is the latest news from Kazakhstan?

Watching Solveig Melkeraaen’s film with a psychiatrist gave me answers the audience are denied in this underexplored self-portrait of depression and ECTGiven that in the UK alone around a quarter of the population will experience some sort of mental health problem each year, any documentary exploring the issues is a welcome addition to the debate. Watching Good Girl alongside Dr Peter MacRae, consultant psychiatrist at East London NHS Foundation Trust, offered some interesting insights into both the reality of living with mental health issues and the pros and cons of documenting the experiences of an individual.Good Girl is a self-portrait of Norwegian filmmaker Solveig Melkeraaen as she undergoes treatment for depression. A successful director at an early age, Melkeraaen found that she was feeling empty and unhappy despite her career and relationship. She decided to film her journey through her illness and recovery, sharing with us a very personal view of the process. Continue reading...

Hundreds of scientists from government agencies to begin walking off the job after months of stalled negotiations over a new industrial agreementHundreds of scientists from CSIRO and other government agencies will begin walking off the job next Thursday as part of public sector-wide industrial action.Work bans at the national research agency started in April after months of stalled negotiations over a new industrial agreement. Continue reading...

A Newcastle-under-Lyme school pupil has discovered a new planet while on a work placement. Tom Wagg, 17, was doing work experience with an astrophysics professor at Keele University when he spotted a minuscule dip in the light from a faraway star that he knew could be caused by a planet passing in front of it. Two years later the large gas form in the southern constellation of Hydra was confirmed as a planet Continue reading...