ResearchPod

How do we know that we can trust software? One answer is software reliability testing.

Dr Mário Pereira and Dr António Ravara from the Nova School of Science and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, and their collaborators have developed the Cameleer tool, a formal verification software tool for OCaml-written code.

Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81688-9_31

Read more in Research Outreach

Alchemy may be understood as the first scientific paradigm, beginning as a collection of observations, experiments, and recipes for practical processes. Woven into these primary alchemical texts were also a good deal of the symbolism, philosophy and religious beliefs of the time.

Dr Julia Kasmire explores the ways in which the seemingly unrelated concepts of sustainability and alchemy can both be understood as strategies that individuals and societies use to further understand our complex world.

Read her original article: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41463-019-00066-6 

Obesity is a growing public health concern, but studies suggest that soluble fibre from certain cereal whole grains can help weight management.
 
Rebecca Mathews and her collaborators in the US conducted a thorough review of key studies demonstrating the efficacy and mechanisms behind oat and barley β-glucan on weight loss. These findings confirm the importance of whole grains in combating obesity.

Read the original article:   https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2021.1994523

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Molecules are comprised of charged particles whose spatial distribution is or could be distorted, lending the molecules a handle by which they can be manipulated via external electromagnetic fields.

Dr Burkhard Schmidt at the Freie Universität Berlin and Professor Bretislav Friedrich at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, along with colleagues, have been studying the effects of electromagnetic fields on molecular rotation and how these effects could be used to achieve quantum control.

Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00268976.2021.1966111

Find out more in Research Outreach

 While some bacteria are beneficial, such as probiotic bacteria in the human gastrointestinal tract, others can have serious consequences for human health.

Professor Aliyar Cyrus Fouladkhah of  Tennessee State University  studies preventative measures for microbial pathogens and foodborne and waterborne infectious diseases in the context of climate change.

 Read the original research: https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fmicroorganisms8050748

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New generations of particle accelerators are now in development, in which beams of particles collide ever more precisely and at ever higher energies.

Professor Stephen Myers, former Director of Accelerators & Technology at CERN and currently Executive Chair of ADAM SA, identifies both the positive and negative lessons which future projects can learn from previous generations of accelerators for one upcoming project: the Future Circular Collider.

 Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02056-w

 Find more about this work in Research Outreach

Dr Bradlee Heckmann and his team at the USF Health Neuroscience Institute in the US aim to develop new therapeutic avenues for treating neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

Read their original article here: http://doi.org/10.4103/1673-5374.317958

Read more about their work in Research Features

A healthcare system that is preventative, collective and inclusive is far more resilient, and cheaper to run, than private for-profit schemes.  Such a preventative system will be much cheaper to invest in building now than waiting to repair our current frameworks after the next pandemic. However, we need a financial plan that is able to ensure this change 

The Tao of Finance initiative from the World Academy of Arts and Sciences proposes a new mode of finance to fund the WHO, delivering adaptive and targeted funding to the health care needed for today and tomorrow.

Read more about the Tao of Finance at the WAAS website, or read the books ‘Financing Our Future' and 'Financing our Anthropocene'

The WASTE FEW ULL project is developing and testing internationally applicable methods of identifying inefficiencies in a city-region’s food-energy-water nexus.
 
It is achieving this goal through an international network of industry/civic society-led Urban Living Labs (ULL) in four urban regions - UK (Bristol), Netherlands (Rotterdam), South Africa (Cape Town) and Brazil (São Paulo).

Read more in Research Features

In the face of increasing drug resistance, there is a pressing need to develop new antibiotic compounds. However, the effort of developing such new treatments can go unrewarded, so long as there are still cheaper options in current supply, even as their effectiveness wanes. 

Olof Lindahl and Chantal Morel review the business interventions, stewardship policies and prescription practices available to incentivise the development of new medicines, and thus support global health.

Find out more about their work at  https://www.jpiamr.eu/

Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-020-0300-y