Live Scientists

LIVE Q&A | Infected Before Birth: Cytomegalovirus, An Uncommon Problem? | 18:30 (UK time), 8 March 2021.

LIVE streaming at YouTube 18:30 (UK time), 8 March 2021. Summary: My main research interest is around viral infections that occur during pregnancy and get passed on to the unborn baby sometimes causing serious disease. These are known as “congenital infections”. Before we developed the MMR vaccine the most serious congenital infection was caused by rubella virus which is sometimes known as the German Measles virus. If a pregnant woman caught rubella during the first 3 months of her pregnancy her baby had a very high chance of being stillborn, or if it survived having permanent problems affecting their heart, their… Read More »LIVE Q&A | Infected Before Birth: Cytomegalovirus, An Uncommon Problem? | 18:30 (UK time), 8 March 2021.

COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 1

Fighting back: The immune system’s battle against COVID-19  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus which causes COVID-19, a disease which I’m sure you’ll all be familiar with by now. It has tragically caused the deaths of over a million people worldwide – but not everyone who catches it gets severely ill. What is going on in the individuals who suffer from COVID-19 the most severely? The secret lies in their immune systems.  The difficult thing our body must deal with when fighting COVID-19 is that the virus likes to hide inside our cells. Here, the virus is shielded from detection and attack by our immune system and can happily replicate itself to produce more virus. Fortunately for us, when a virus like SARS-CoV-2 invades a cell, it causes a… Read More »COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 1

Google AI Experiments – An Online Hands-On Activity

AI (Artificial Intelligence) Experiments with Google are similar to mini games that showcase how AI can easily memorize patterns that it is coded to memorize and recognize these patterns very quickly. This is known as machine learning. For example, you can draw something and have the AI guess it for you (quite quickly) or you can listen to 14000 different sounds…or 14000 different bird sounds! Our volunteer, Youssef, showcases this with a couple of experiments. He will show you how to access and try them, and even make one yourselves – just watch the short video guide below! Check out… Read More »Google AI Experiments – An Online Hands-On Activity

LIVE with Scientists Anniversary Month: Get Involved!

1) Emoji competition:  It can be a challenge to distil our projects right down but can be so helpful when communicating our science! What better way of doing this than simplifying right down into emoji form? If you want to take part all you need to do is:  Summarise your project/research in emoji form- use as few words as you can and get creative! Don’t get too technical or use jargon if you can avoid it!  Post it on twitter using the hashtag #LwSEmoji between 5th and 9th April (if you ‘at’ us @livescientists we will retweet your post!)  Have a go… Read More »LIVE with Scientists Anniversary Month: Get Involved!

Antibiotic Resistance Webinar – LIVE with Scientists and ANTRUK

Bacterial antibiotic resistance is on the rise globally, threatening modern medicine as we know it. Nearly every medical procedure, from cancer treatment and organ transplantation to hip or joint replacement, is dependent on effective antibiotics. This British Science Week, join LIVE with Scientists in collaboration with Antibiotic Research UK (ANTRUK) for a live webinar on antibiotic resistance. Hear about what antibiotic resistance is, how it develops and the threats it poses to effective healthcare. We’ll be talking to two PhD students whose research focuses on tackling antibiotic resistance in two different types of bacteria, E. coli and C. difficile. You… Read More »Antibiotic Resistance Webinar – LIVE with Scientists and ANTRUK

LIVE Talk | Robots Learning in Simulation | 18:30 (UK time), 16 February 2021.

LIVE streaming at YouTube 18:30 (UK time), 16 February 2021. Summary: ‘The development of autonomous robots would be a significant accomplishment for society. Autonomous robots require the ability to learn from interaction: to try new actions, observe success and failure, and tie effects back to causes. In this talk I will describe how we can create robots that learn through interaction. Instead of being programmed to complete a task, such learning robots can figure out the right way to accomplish the task on their own. I’ll further discuss how my own research aims to develop robots that can learn in… Read More »LIVE Talk | Robots Learning in Simulation | 18:30 (UK time), 16 February 2021.

LIVE Q&A | Where Next With Wearables | 18:30 (UK time), 8 February 2021.

LIVE streaming at YouTube 18:30 (UK time), 8 February 2021. Summary: ‘My research investigates all aspects of how electronics interface with biology, particularly for wearable devices and personal health monitoring. This involves hardware – making electronics which can flex and stretch so that they better connect to the body. It also involves software – making artificial intelligence which can make sense of body signals, even in the presence of lots of interference (from devices which don’t connect very well to the body). In the Q&A session, I would like to talk about future directions in wearable technology, from the engineering… Read More »LIVE Q&A | Where Next With Wearables | 18:30 (UK time), 8 February 2021.

Sensing the Unknown: Using Electromagnetism to Find Hidden Objects – Dr Liam Marsh

When I decided to study Electrical Engineering at university, I hadn’t thought much about what would come next. Spending my days as a first year undergraduate hearing about abstract electromagnetic theory seemed about as dull a subject as I could possibly imagine. Given the choice I would always have picked a soldering iron and a few hours in the lab over learning Biot-Savart Law or Gauss’ law. How on earth could Maxwell’s Equations, published circa 1861, possibly be of any use to me (or anyone?!) in the future? Somehow, a few years later, I found myself once again caught up… Read More »Sensing the Unknown: Using Electromagnetism to Find Hidden Objects – Dr Liam Marsh

How To Build A Bug Hotel

During our ‘Environment Month’, we have explored colour and sex changes in marine animals, removing carbon from our oceans and the impact of climatic changes on brown trout, embryonic sharks and tuna. You may be thinking, what about the environment that’s a little closer to home? Well, we have that covered too. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is the largest charity dedicated to conservation in the UK. Their work involves establishing and maintaining nature reserves in order to protect the UK’s most vulnerable species of bird (and a variety of other wildlife that take refuge in… Read More »How To Build A Bug Hotel

LIVE Talk | Fish Physiology in an Era of Climate Change | 18:30 (UK time), 19 January 2021.

LIVE streaming at YouTube 18:30 (UK time), 19 January 2021. Summary: ‘The aquatic environment is in a period of rapid changed with increasing temperature, decreasing oxygen, floods and surges and pollution.  Our lab studies the impact of these changes on the animals living there and tries to understand traits and mechanism that allow animals to adapt and survive.  In this talk I am going to share 3 short stories where we have investigated the impact of climate change on fish.  The first is about an iconic British salmonid the brown trout and show how studies of movement and metabolism tell… Read More »LIVE Talk | Fish Physiology in an Era of Climate Change | 18:30 (UK time), 19 January 2021.