The idea of sailing through space and breaking through the current frontiers of humanity is dazzling. The intrinsic beauty of this endeavour, for me, lies in the circularity of history. It’s about revisiting the ages of the big European explorers that sailed to new worlds. These journeys taught us about those new places, but most of all it confronted us with ourselves; about our place in the world, about our greed and cruelty, about beauty and about our curiosity.

Nanomachines which can drill into cancer cells, killing them in just 60 seconds, have been developed by scientists.

A team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raytheon BBN Technologies developed a new device that can detect single photons across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from the higher energy visible to much lower energy radio frequencies. The device consists of a sheet of graphene contacted on two ends by superconductors – a configuration called a Josephson junction.

A team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raytheon BBN Technologies developed a new device that can detect single photons across a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from the higher energy visible to much lower energy radio frequencies. The device consists of a sheet of graphene contacted on two ends by superconductors – a configuration called a Josephson junction.

The European Commission recently awarded nearly €3.7 million ($4.4 million USD) to an international initiative in the field of early diagnosis of brain cancer. The four-year program, which will be led by Plymouth University, is called An Integrated Platform for Developing Brain Cancer Diagnostic Techniques, or AiPBAND. It will focus on gliomas with specific objectives to identify new blood biomarkers for the disease, design plasmonic-based, graphene-based, and digital ELISA assay-based multiplex biosensors; and to develop a big data-empowered intelligent data management infrastructure and cloud-based diagnostic systems.