Subscribe

UCL Science Magazine

Could Our Favourite Pineapple-Inhabiting Friend Help Treat Alzheimer’s?

Could Our Favourite Pineapple-Inhabiting Friend Help Treat Alzheimer’s?

Though less lively than their cartoon counterpart, deep-ocean sponges are helping researchers alleviate symptoms of Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Research spearheaded by the Perha Pharmaceuticals lab in Roscoff, France, has produced a promising drug candidate, Leucettinib-21. I had the opportunity to meet the lead researcher, Dr Laurent

Trial and Error - How Robots Are Learning to Walk, Run, and Fly

Trial and Error - How Robots Are Learning to Walk, Run, and Fly

Throughout our lives, we learn how to behave through trial and error. What if we could teach machines using the same principle? From football-playing robots to chemical reaction simulations, deep reinforcement learning is unlocking new levels of intelligence in machines. By Julian Tan Imagine training a dog to sit by

Eco-Innovation: Can We Tackle the Climate Crisis Using IVF Corals and Cyborg Plants?

Eco-Innovation: Can We Tackle the Climate Crisis Using IVF Corals and Cyborg Plants?

Climate change is already reshaping our world, but what if nature and technology could fight back together? IVF corals and cyborg peace lilies are emerging as unlikely heroes in the battle against environmental destruction. These innovative solutions - designed to restore fragile marine ecosystems and monitor hidden pollutants- are reimagining

AlphaFold2: Reshaping Our Understanding of Protein Folding

AlphaFold2: Reshaping Our Understanding of Protein Folding

AlphaFold2, one of the AI programs behind the 2024 Nobel Prize win in Chemistry, provides an innovative breakthrough for tackling "The Protein Folding Problem." The protein structure prediction capability provided by AlphaFold2 not only provides a new perspective for solving this long-standing problem but also indicates the potential

How to Train Your Fusion Reactor: Letting Tokamaks Learn Stability

How to Train Your Fusion Reactor: Letting Tokamaks Learn Stability

Fusion Reactors, while impressively useful for renewable energy production, often run into chaos due to plasma disruption events. A group of scientists tackled this problem using reinforcement learning, letting the reactor learn how to stay stable during operation. By Faraaz Akhtar You may have heard of the notion that we

The Shining Abacus: How Light Can Be Used to Perform Computations

The Shining Abacus: How Light Can Be Used to Perform Computations

Quantum Computing is one of the hottest buzzwords in technology today, but what lies beneath the hype? How does this cutting-edge tech actually work, and why is it being called a game-changer for everything from medicine to cybersecurity? By Veronika Liutarevich Quantum computing is a broad term describing the field

Sticking it to Cancer: How Molecular Glues Could Transform Treatment

Sticking it to Cancer: How Molecular Glues Could Transform Treatment

Imagine a therapy that forces rogue cancer-causing proteins to self-destruct. Molecular glues offer just that — a ground-breaking avenue in targeted protein degradation, especially when conventional cancer drugs fail. By Neelabh Datta. These small molecules foster binding interactions between harmful proteins and degradation signallers known as E3 ubiquitin ligases - these