Author: Diane Shipley

Staff Writer Diane is especially interested in high-tech medical advances, weird and interesting uses of science, new gadgets, and the intersection of tech and lifestyle. When not working, she reads the internet, listens to podcasts, watches American TV, and thinks about leaving the house.

Five thrilling reads to fill the Gone Girl-shaped gap in your life

[nextpage title="Next"] Whether you're waiting until after the movie to read the book, or you finished it months ago, you can expect to feel bereft once you've turned Gone Girl's final page. The good news is that the stratospheric success of Gillian Flynn's addictively twisty-turny story has inspired a boom in psychological thrillers, especially ones by…
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Patients using health apps (and Google) are making GPs’ lives miserable

A new survey has found that patients are increasingly asking doctors for treatment they’ve seen recommended online or in an app, reports the BBC. Research firm Cello Health Insight spoke to 300 UK GPs and found that a third of them have patients who come to appointments already knowing what they want to be prescribed,…

Babies can start picking up a language at four months old, says study

They might not be able to speak, but there’s no reason that babies as young as four months can’t be learning about language, according to new research. (I mean, what else have they got to do, nap?) April Benasich and her colleagues at Rutgers University-Newark conducted an experiment with four-month-old babies. They played non-language audio…

Scientists have discovered how chimps learn new behaviour

For the first time, scientists have recorded how chimps in the wild pick up new behaviour. The research, which was just published in the journal PLOS Biology, was undertaken by an international team from the University of St Andrews, University of Neuchâtel, Anglia Ruskin University, and Université du Quebec. Chimpanzees in different communities have different…

A new gold patch could replace heart transplants

Scientists have developed a new patch that could remove the need for heart transplants. Because heart muscles contain few stem cells and heart cells are unable to reproduce, there’s no way for the heart to repair itself, for example after a heart attack. But Dr Tal Dvir and his graduate student Michal Shevach from Tel…

Could swallowing small needles replace injections?

Researchers in the U.S have invented a new acrylic capsule for delivering drugs straight into the digestive tract. It’s two centimetres long, one centimetre in diameter, has a space inside for medication and, oh yes, is covered in needles. When it’s swallowed, it releases the drug into the stomach lining. As horrifying as swallowing needles…

Chemotherapy is safe during pregnancy, researchers say

New research presented this week at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid has shown that chemotherapy is safe during pregnancy (and that radiation therapy only carries a low risk). Dr Frederic Amant from University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium said that as long as chemo was given after the first trimester, there were no negative impacts…

This new wearable harvests electricity while you walk

Mexican scientists have developed a new wearable that fits inside a shoe and can convert energy from walking (or running, I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing) and turn it into electricity. The device, which is around three millimetres thick, is similar to an insole and designed to store mechanical-vibrational energy created by…

Dolphins are sensitive to magnets

Dolphins are sensitive to magnets, French researchers have found. Magnetoreception, or the ability to sense magnetic fields, has long been thought to be one of the ways that marine animals navigate, but there was little evidence that this was the case. So Dorothee Kremers and her colleagues from the Université de Rennes designed an experiment…