Marisa Matias is a Portuguese MEP of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left group (GUE/NGL). A social scientist by training, she is very active in the areas of public health, science and research. Why should science be calling out for women? She believes it will help tackle Europe’s brain drain. ‘It will help jugulate the brain drain Europe is suffering and boost gender equality,’ she says.
Grants should only be given to research organisations who have received an award for female-friendly policies, according to a UK scientist who was overlooked for a Nobel Prize on pulsars even though she did much of the work.
It all started with the chance discovery of a country lane full of wild orchids by an inquisitive young girl in rural England. That young girl, Frances Ashcroft, would go on to become one of Europe’s leading diabetes researchers.
Drivers may soon be able to take their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road in their own cars, leaving the driving to modern technology. That is the conclusion drawn by the partners of the SARTRE project, after recent successful testing of road train ‘platooning’ in Sweden. However, more human barriers remain to be lifted before it could become commonplace.
It is about two in the morning and while most Europeans are tucked up in bed, the sleep-deprived crew members of the Pegasos Zeppelin are preparing for take-off. Weather conditions are perfect so they load the airship with their state-of-the-art equipment and get ready to start their day’s work.
When Tim Gowers, a maths professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK, wrote a blog post criticising the high price charged by academic journals to access research, he did not expect to start a revolution.
Doctors should routinely test people’s feet to check for diabetes, that’s according to a former UK Health Minister and MEP who has become a campaigner for the disease after being diagnosed with it himself.
After the discovery of the so-called ‘God particle’, scientists could turn the world's biggest particle accelerator to uncovering dark matter, or even shedding light on parallel universes.
