243 results found for royal-society

Mark Cutkosky is Fletcher Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. Here he discusses climbing robots and how they can take their cue from nature.

Professor Ray Goldstein FRS is the Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems at the University of Cambridge. Here he describes a biological example of topological inversion, with relevance to engineering problems in human technology.

Florian Hollfelder is based in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in mechanism in chemistry and biology. Here he describes using principles of natural selection to make functional proteins.

Stanislav Gorb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel, Germany, with an interest in functional morphology and biomechanics. Here he discusses clustering as a form of self-assembly, and applications in adhesion.

Directrice de Recherche Patricia Bassereau, Institut Curie Centre de Recherche Laboratorie Physico-Chimie, France, speaks on bioinspired membrane-based systems for a physical approach of cell organization and dynamics: usefulness and limitations.

Stephen Hyde is Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and the Research School of Physics and Engineering at the Australian National University in Canberra. Taking the popular children's game as a starting point, he asks whether crystalli....

Yuru Deng is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore with a background in dentistry. Here she discusses the enigmatic functions of biological cubic membranes.

George Whitesides is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Best-known for his work in NMR spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly and nanotechnology, here he introduces sof....

The sight of a little warbler feeding an enormous cuckoo chick has astonished observers since ancient times. It was once thought that cuckoos were unable to raise their own young because of defective anatomy and behaviour, and so other birds were onl....

The cell wall is a crucial structure found in almost all bacteria. It is the target for our best antibiotics and fragments of the wall trigger powerful innate immune responses against infection. Surprisingly, many bacteria can switch almost effortl....

Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society and Lord Stern, President of the British Academy, discussed the new opportunities – and need – for collaboration between the traditional academic disciplines to respond to the big issues of our time,....

Find out what we have learnt from the outbreak so far (March 2015) and what is being done to ensure continued resilience to epidemic scenarios.

Join us as we celebrate International Women’s Day by exploring the history of women writing about science.  How did early women scientists use writing in order to further their careers? In which ways were they limited by their gender? What influen....

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s LHC accelerator in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations was the culmination of a decades-long search that had started in 1964 with the proposal of this unique particle, a signature of the origin of the....

For over 50 years scientists have been working to understand Antarctica’s contribution to sea level. For much of this time there has even been disagreement about if this massive ice sheet is growing or shrinking. In 2012, advances in data analysis....

Chemistry has progressed in a way few outsiders appreciate. It underpins many other sciences; from genomics and molecular biology, food and sports science, through to cosmology and planetary science. Why hasn't the public impression of chemistry evol....

This talk introduces the basic ideas of machine learning, and illustrates them with application examples. It argues that while machine learning and "big data" analysis currently mainly focuses on statistics; the causal point of view can provide addit....

Infectious diseases rank among the gravest threats to human health alongside global warming and terrorism. New strains continue to evolve every year and can spread rapidly. The consequences can be devastating. The 1918 Spanish flu killed an estimated....

To grow tissues in our body two key types of DNA control how, where and when to build essential proteins. Recent comparisons of mammal genomes show that instructions coding how to build proteins are similar across diverse species. In contrast the gen....

Most of the data we generate and receive (whether emails, tweets, videos or mobile calls) are now carried by optical fibres, which use light to transmit vast quantities of information over trans-oceanic distances. The use of hundreds of wavelengths ....

What role do literature, science and policy play in protecting the planet? Fifty years since the death of conservationist Rachel Carson, we look at her masterpiece Silent Spring, and ask: "What have we learnt? Listen to our panel of experts: author ....

This lecture discusses how the discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome provided the first example of a link between cancer and a recurrent genetic abnormality. This chromosomal translocation, which results in activation of the Abl protein kinase, re....

All the organs of our body originate from small founder populations of cells which multiply into complex structures. ÊAdult stem cells are used to maintain organs throughout adult life and to repair or regenerate them after damage.Ê Focusing on the....

The lone (mad) scientist is a common trope in science fiction, but hidden away is a fascination with secret and semi-secret societies who work for the future of all mankind. This talk will look at the representation of the Royal Society in science fi....

Commentaries on Vesuvius have, for some two thousand years, see-sawed between observers' fascination with the phenomenon, as an inexplicable expression of the earth's inner force, and the relationship of the unpredictable mountain to a religious popu....

Award-winning author Bill Bryson speaks to Professor Jim Al-Khalili about his personal experiences and perspectives on science, from childhood and his school years, through to writing the highly successful 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' and e....

Thirty percent of us carryÊStaphylococcus aureusÊup our noses. Boils and infections after surgery bring it to our attention. Mutant clones are called MRStaphylococcus Aureus,ÊorÊMRSA. All these things make it important today.Ê Hugh Pennington CB....

The year 2014 was celebrated as the International Year of Crystallography. A number of successful 20th century women scientists, of whom the Nobel prizewinner Dorothy Hodgkin is perhaps the most prominent, achieved their distinction in this field. Wh....

In the course of his scientific career, Francis Crick changed research fields several times. In almost 30 years at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he worked on protein crystallography, molecular genetics, developmental cell biol....

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is routinely used in hospitals to image internal structure and blood flow within the human body. Research has shown that it is possible to harness these techniques to study non-biological systems, with many applicatio....

Can science today learn from thirteenth century literature? In the Durham Ordered Universe project, an interdisciplinary team (physicists, medievalists, Latin scholars and historians of science) has engaged with the great medieval English thinker Rob....

Philosophical TransactionsÊis the worldÕs first and oldest scientific journal. Still published by the Royal Society, it is about to mark its 350th anniversary, and was instrumental in establishing many forms and facets of modern scholarly publishin....

Modern scientific theory describes a perfectly symmetrical Universe. A Universe in which matter is destroyed within an instant of its appearance and where nothing we now know could ever have happened. Human life itself seems to be lopsided, as the sp....

This lecture aims to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Sir Henry Bessemer by reviewing his scientific and economic achievements in the context of his era, and also in terms of their ongoing impact on the world of today. As well as highlightin....

Although women were not admitted as Fellows until 1945, by the beginning of the twentieth century there were a number of female scientists working at the margins of the Royal Society and its masculine scientific elite. This talk will introduce some o....

Until recently, little was known about how the human brain develops. In the past 15 years, new technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled us to gain insights into how the human brain changes across the lifespan. Research has d....

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fireworks offered some intriguing possibilities for scientific research among the experimental philosophers of the Royal Society. What was the nature of fire? How did combustion work? Why did gunpowder exp....

The period 1600-1850 saw fundamental changes in how we understand natural processes. Chemistry and medicine especially moved away from classical ideas of 'balance' and 'vital properties' - such as fire and water - to understanding nature as an integr....

The conquest of Everest by a British team in 1953 has always been celebrated as a triumph of heroic leadership, team work and courageous climbing, but the vital role that scientific innovation played in the success of the expedition has never been wi....

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915) was one of the foremost English physicists of the early twentieth century. Probably best remembered for his immense contributions to chemistry and atomic physics in the years immediately prior to the outbreak o....

A joint project of the Royal Society and the British Association, the Great Melbourne Telescope was the result of both technical and organisational innovation in the design and manufacture of a large telescope. At the completion of its construction b....

The idea of sustainability has deep roots in practically all cultures of the world. The term itself, however, so familiar in today's global vocabulary, was shaped in the 17th century European discourse on timber shortage. Initiated by the newly-estab....

Human infectious diseases will be eliminated and replaced by chronic ÒlifestyleÓ diseases as fertility falls, life expectancy increases, and populations grow older and wealthier. This is the standard story of the epidemiologic transition, but it is....

Learning about new environments or locating ourselves in familiar environments are some of the most fundamental tasks that the brain performs. Information is not stored in response to biological needs such as hunger or thirst but on the basis of cogn....

Whether you eat a whole box of chocolates or fast for the day, the pancreatic beta-cells ensure that your blood glucose level remains relatively constant by regulating the release of insulin from the pancreatic beta-cells. Diabetes results when insul....

Magic and science have traditionally been considered to have little in common. Yet for many sixteenth-century intellectuals, including churchmen, practising magic was based upon highly sophisticated knowledge of the natural world. For ecclesiastical ....

How did it feel to open a newspaper in November 1919 to be greeted by headlines about 'Light Caught Bending' and a 'Revolution in Space and Time'? Einstein's relativity reached a wide public audience in the context of social change. The theory's inte....

Ancient Egyptian belief was frequently derived from observations of the natural world, where the gods were considered to control the forces of nature; and as a society, ancient Egyptians placed great value upon order and balance. So how would the app....