Jennifer Doudna: I have to be true to who I am as a scientist

Crispr inventor Jennifer Doudna talks about discovering the gene-editing tool, the split with her collaborator and the complex ethics of genetic manipulation. Jennifer Doudna, 53, is an American biochemist based at the University of California, Berkeley. Together with the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, she led the discovery of the revolutionary gene-editing tool, Crispr. The technology […]

Brexit and the UK economy one year on – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images Before last year’s Brexit vote, there were warnings from many economists that the UK would suffer a catastrophic economic shock and be catapulted into recession by a Leave vote. As it turned out, those predictions were a touch pessimistic. But one year on, what do economists and businesses think of the […]

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. In 2011, Claudio Aspesi, a senior investment analyst at Bernstein Research in London, made a bet that the dominant firm in one of the most lucrative […]

Great Barrier Reef valued at $56bn as report warns it’s ‘too big to fail’

Deloitte Access Economics report says reef underpins 64,000 jobs and contributes $6.4bn to economy each year. A new report has valued the Great Barrier Reef at $56bn and warns of vast economic consequences for Australia unless more is done to protect it. The Deloitte Access Economics report says the world heritage-listed reef underpins 64,000 direct […]

Study suggests e-cigs are just as harmful as tobacco but there’s a catch

In April researchers at the University of Connecticut released a study that claimed e-cigarettes could be potentially as harmful as tobacco cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage. “From the results of our study, we can conclude that e-cigarettes have as much potential to cause DNA damage as unfiltered regular cigarettes,” Karteek Kadimisetty, a […]