June eNews

Welcome to this month's eNews.

This month we have our top 5 most read items from May 2023, our Editor's choice and our image of the month.

If you have any questions or want to get in touch please email the News Team

All the best,

News Team

Top 5 May 2023

1. Film shapes our understanding of the past, published by University of Oslo, Faculty of Humanities on 10 May 2023

Media researchers Kim Wilkins and Timotheus Vermeulen at the University of Oslo, Norway have taken a deep dive into the films of American director Richard Linklater in their book “ReFocus: The Films of Richard Linklater”. They claim that Linklater’s films are prime examples of how film can provide a snapshot of a culture at a specific point in time and at the same time exert an influence on the people who watch it.

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2. New study illustrates unique genetic landscape in Newfoundland and Labrador with links to Ireland and England, published by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences on 15 May 2023

A new study by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, based in Dublin, Ireland, and Sequence Bio, a genomics and precision medicine company based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada, has produced the most detailed genetic analysis of people living in the Canadian province to date, demonstrating a unique founder population structure that could be used for the identification and study of health-related genetic variants.

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3. Moss-covered forest ditches combat climate change, published by Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) on 2 May 2023

According to a study by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), the University of Tampere and the University of Helsinki, ditches in forestry-drained peatlands release less methane into the atmosphere than what has previously been estimated. The study showed that methane emissions are particularly low in moss-covered ditches. The proportion of such ditches from all forest ditches is increasing, as ditch network maintenance will decrease when the granted forestry subsidies end.

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4. University College Dublin Pharma Software Spin-out Enters Exclusive HPC Cloud Partnership with CGG, published by UCD Research and Innovation on 5 May 2023

Biosimulytics, a University College Dublin pharma software spin-out, has signed an exclusive partnership agreement with CGG, a global technology and HPC leader headquartered in Paris, to accelerate market adoption of Biosimulytics’ AI drug development technology.

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5. Nigeria’s new president ‘must walk the talk on health’, published by SciDev.Net on 24 May 2023

Nigeria’s president-elect eyes 40 per cent health insurance coverage in two years meanwhile over 75,000 nurses and midwives left Nigeria in the last five years.

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Editor's choice

Johanna Spyri and Heidi archives included in the Memory of the World Register of UNESCO published by University of Zurich on 18/05/2023

The Johanna Spyri and Heidi archives in Zurich have been added to UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register. The decision by the Executive Board of UNESCO acknowledges the collections' universal importance. The University of Zurich will be working with both institutions to promote the academic study of the collections.

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Image caption: The Johanna Spyri Archive collection contains over 600 foreign-language "Heidi" editions in more than 40 languages. (Johanna Spyri-Archiv, @Naomi Wenger)

Image of the month

Scales or feathers? It all comes down to a few genes published by Université de Genève on 15/05/2023

Scales, spines, feathers and hair are examples of vertebrate skin appendages, which constitute a remarkably diverse group of micro-organs. Despite their natural multitude of forms, these appendages share early developmental processes at the embryonic stage. Two researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have discovered how to permanently transform the scales that normally cover the feet of chickens into feathers, by specificially modifying the expression of certain genes. These results, published in the journal Science Advances, open new perspectives for studying mechanisms that have enabled radical evolutionary transitions in form among species.

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Image caption: A transient change in expression of one gene (Shh) can produce a cascade of developmental events leading to the formation of feathers instead of scales. © UNIGE / Cooper & Milinkovitch