Insulating materials that could fit inside icepacks to transport and store vaccines more effectively are about to enter field trials in Vietnam.
The novel materials make use of the phase change — the point at which solids melt or liquids turn to solids — to keep the vaccines within a limited temperature range and prevent them from spoiling because of temperature variations.
If successful, the new vaccine carriers could be produced in India for use around the world, according to Shawn McGuire, an engineer at the global non-governmental organisation Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). Continue reading Phase-changing materials in trial to preserve vaccines→
Teresa Riera Madurell, member of the European Parliament from Spain, was appointed last month as the rapporteur responsible for establishing Horizon 2020, the next European Union (EU) research-funding programme that will run during 2014–20. The former computer scientist leads five other parliamentary rapporteurs who, over the next year, will craft four legislative documents that will dictate the structure of Horizon 2020 and related European research initiatives. She tells Nature how she hopes the programme will develop.
Early in his career, Paul Olsen sat in front of a television, expecting to see his own image. He had hosted a television crew on a research expedition to Manicouagan Crater in Canada, where he and his team were investigating the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in the geological record. Olsen, a palaeontologist at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, New York, had spent hours explaining and re-explaining for the camera how scientists used the site to reconstruct ancient ecologies. As the opening credits rolled, Olsen wondered how he would come across on the small screen.
Spanish scientists have collected more than 32,000 signatures in less than a week in support of a petition that urges Spain’s tax authority to adopt a novel way of raising funds for research: adding a checkbox to income tax forms that would allow taxpayers to direct 0.7% of their contribution to science. Continue reading Spanish researchers petition for taxpayer donations→
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.