The UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, came to London to meet with business leaders about agreeing a new and universal climate agreement by COP-21 in Paris, December 2015. She came to the SMC to meet journalists in advance of the next part of IPCC AR5. read more

As the impact of winter flooding becomes clear, senior engineers and academics came to the SMC to talk about what engineering can (and can’t) do to prevent and reduce the impact of flooding in the UK. read more

Around 1 in 6 people suffer from major depressive disorder at some point in their lives. Currently there is no way to predict the at-risk groups, but researchers at the University of Cambridge have been attempting to find biomarkers for use in adolescents. read more

Hydrologists and geologists working at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and the British Geological Survey (BGS) came to … read more

Current EU rules do not incentivise pharmaceutical companies to test cancer drugs in children, even though some childhood cancers have similar genetic and biochemical properties to some adult cancers. The Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR), is calling for changes to the current system in the EU, to encourage pharma companies to test more of their drugs in children. read more

The Government announced a Delivery Plan which explains how they are going to meet their commitment to work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research. read more

Treatments for mental health have had a bumpy ride. Many people do not trust the drugs, whilst the evidence for non-pharmaceutical therapies can be very varied. Publishing in The Lancet, UK researchers have investigated whether Cognitive Therapy (also known as CBT) is a viable alternative therapy. read more

Energy from the sun is clean, free and practically limitless. Solar power represents a vast resource which could, in principle, meet the world’s needs for low-carbon power generation many times over. But how much of the world’s electricity might realistically be supplied from the sun? And how far can solar power help us to reduce carbon emissions? read more

Rothamsted Research has applied to Defra to conduct a field trial of GM plants that produce omega-3 oils and may provide health, environmental and economic benefits. read more

With Michael Schumacher’s accident and recent debates over concussed goalkeepers, brain injuries have been constantly in the news. Researchers publishing in JAMA Psychiatry have been investigating the long-term impacts of traumatic brain injuries and what it means for patients. read more

Leading medical research charities launched the ‘Sharing data save lives’ campaign to raise awareness of the importance of sharing data from patient records and came to the SMC to argue that the benefits far outweigh inflated privacy concerns. read more

Heavy rain and storms have lashed the UK in early 2014. Meanwhile the US suffers extreme cold while Australia experiences a heatwave. We often hear that climate change may be causing this extreme weather. But is that really true? read more

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs reviewed the evidence of the misuse and harms of ketamine and its analogues to inform the government’s public health response, as well as the classification of ketamine. read more

Imperial college invited Professor Steven Brown of the MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit at Harwell to chair an independent committee to investigate and assess the approach to animal care and welfare across the college. read more

Dementia is a hot topic – it affects over 800,000 people in the UK and one in three people aged over 65 will die with a form of dementia. To coincide with the G8 Dementia Summit we brought together some of the leading experts to discuss where the research community want to happen. read more

Researchers have completed the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) which assesses whether people are practising safe sex, which age group actually has the most unplanned pregnancies and how our attitudes and satisfaction impact on our physical and mental health. read more

Learning from animals as patients – an approach called ‘Comparative medicine’ or ‘One Medicine’ – is one of the big new trends in science and is being pioneered at universities throughout the UK and supported by medical research funders. The SMC invited four of the leading pioneers in this area to brief journalists about how the approach is now being applied to the big challenges of our time including ageing cancer and heart disease. read more

Intensive farming has a bad name with plenty of assumptions about poor animal welfare and putting commercial gain above environmental damage. The SMC invited leading experts to brief journalists on the views of agricultural scientists and vets on this controversial area. read more

Despite numerous attempts to encourage new mothers to breastfeed their babies, rates remain stubbornly low in parts of the UK. A feasibility study is starting in which shopping vouchers will be issued to mothers who start and continue breastfeeding from the birth of their child. read more

Approximately half the fish caught in marine fisheries are thrown back into the sea because they are un-marketable or over-quota. The reformed European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) now intends to ban the practice by 2019. This has been hailed by campaigners as a triumph. But what does the science say? read more