@mikepeeljourno.bsky.social
@FinancialTimes.com science editor. Ex-Nigeria, UAE, Thailand, Belgium & Japan. Latest book: What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except the British) - https://linktr.ee/whateveryoneknowsaboutbritain. Author of The Fabulists and A Swamp Full of Dollars.
Could weight loss drugs be an effective treatment for many addictions, including to alcohol, nicotine and opioids?
This fascinating research raises the question of whether these medicines work by damping biological processes that stoke a wide range of cravings.
www.ft.com/content/899f...
Two stories this week highlight growing resource fights in UK science.
Leading physicists are battling the government over cost cuts.
www.ft.com/content/a235...
Meanwhile the private London Institute for Mathematical Sciences aims to make itself a research power.
www.ft.com/content/6e0e...
Peptides - the building blocks of proteins - are promoted by health influencers as having all kinds of benefits.
But the claims are often thinly evidenced. Here we run the rule over the hopes and hype around four popular peptide supplements.
www.ft.com/content/0f68...
Peptides - the building blocks of proteins - are promoted by health influencers as having all kinds of benefits.
But the claims are often thinly evidenced. Here we run the rule over the hopes and hype around four popular peptides supplement.
www.ft.com/content/0f68...
A study of more than 1.8mn people across three continents has found vegetarians are at lower risk than meat-eaters of at least five cancers.
Important details too on how non meat-eaters should supplement micronutrients to avoid potential elevated risk of some tumours.
www.ft.com/content/ce5a...
Good news: a new single-pill daily HIV therapy promises vital protection to long-term survivors of the virus whose health is especially vulnerable because of underlying conditions, resistance to other drugs and difficulties adhering to complex multi-tablet treatments.
www.ft.com/content/4fe5...
Powerful nations and big companies are battling for supplies of chemical elements coveted for their uses in areas from artificial intelligence to the military.
Here is an FT guide, brought to life by our brilliant visual team, to the periodic table's prized substances.
www.ft.com/content/de4d...
A Sunday evening interview with Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold to exercise the mind and stir the spirit.
The UK monarchy is scrambling to stop ex-prince Andrew’s arrest turning into a wider crisis for the institution.
In What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except the British), I explore how 70-year royal reigns in the UK and Thailand carried seeds of their own destruction.
linktr.ee/whateveryone...
Nobel laureate Frances Arnold has had an extraordinary journey from teenage rebellion in Pittsburgh to harnessing AI to evolutionary biology to create new kinds of chemistry.
I sat down with her for a Lunch with the FT in the bistro of Stockholm's Nobel Prize Museum.
www.ft.com/content/9923...
Come for the cute cat pic, stay for the fascinating ways felines could help combat cancers.
How animals deal with cancers is a growing focus for scientists seeking better treatments for people.
The largest-ever study of cat tumour genetics has triggered ideas that could benefit both felines and their human companions.
www.ft.com/content/807a...
Tetris has been a cult computer game for decades and now its colourful spinning blocks are part of a potential new therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers.
It helped rid health workers who had disturbing Covid-19 pandemic flashbacks of their symptoms.
www.ft.com/content/e185...
The mystery of the "missing microbe".
The bacteria in our gut play crucial roles in our health, including our immune systems, that we still don't fully understand.
Scientists charted the concerning absence of the bug B. infantis from many babies in western countries
www.ft.com/content/5928...
A psychedelic chemical found in ayahuasca and nicknamed the "businessman's trip" because of its fast impact and short duration is being trialled to treat depression.
It's part of growing research into the use of perception-altering drugs for mental health.
www.ft.com/content/492f...
The latest episode in the quest for the best ways to lose weight: a study-of-studies finds that intermittent fasting is no better than traditional daily calorie-restriction dieting.
But the evidence remains patchy and many people still find intermittent fasting helpful.
www.ft.com/content/788e...
The fallout from Bill Gates’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has reached the $86bn Gates Foundation global health philanthropy.
Foundation staff raised concerns at a quarterly town hall meeting with chief executive Mark Suzman last week.
www.ft.com/content/2ecd...
Interesting reflection - you may like to read this, which explores related territory.
asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/th...
Morgan McSweeney’s departure, carrying the can for a decision that was ultimately his boss’s, reminds me of the throughline from the cult TV show Grange Hill in the 1980s and modern British politics.
linktr.ee/whateveryone...
It’s dismaying how so many UK faultlines from What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except the British) are in the news: the monarchy, House of Lords, electoral system, island nation vulnerabilities.
Perhaps worst of all: a dangerously warped sense of how the country is.
linktr.ee/whateveryone...
A really disturbing story for our times from @londoncentric.media @jim.londoncentric.media: “engagement is all that matters” taken to its sociopathic conclusion.
NEW: The Epstein-Barr virus lies dormant in the bodies of billions of people - but for some it is linked to serious chronic and even deadly conditions, including cancers. Now scientists have identified 22 genes that could help identify those most at risk.
www.ft.com/content/815d...
NEW: A robot hand that can detach, crawl and grasp multiple objects - and could be an industrial boon.
One researcher compares it to the helpful disembodied hand Thing T Thing from The Addams Family, rather than the scary spider-like enforcers of Minority Report.
www.ft.com/content/39d6...
The Gates Foundation and OpenAI plan to invest in using AI in 1,000 primary health clinics and surrounding communities in Rwanda and several other African countries.
A challenge will be to ensure safeguards against risks of errors, biases and data privacy breaches.
www.ft.com/content/94e6...
NEW: A robot hand that can detach, crawl and grasp multiple objects - and could be an industrial boon.
One researcher compares it to the helpful disembodied hand Thing T Thing from The Addams Family, rather than the scary spider-like enforcers of Minority Report.
www.ft.com/content/39d6...
NEW (And not Trump-related):
A robot hand that can detach, crawl and grasp multiple objects.
Scientists say it's more like the helpful disembodied hand Thing T Thing from The Addams Family than the scary spider-like enforcers of Minority Report.
With video.
www.ft.com/content/39d6...
I think often these days about this line on Trump and the Nobel peace prize, from my interview in March last year with Hanna Stjärne, Nobel Foundation executive director.
I also wrote last month about Trump as the spectre at the Nobel feast.
www.ft.com/content/bb1b...
www.ft.com/content/61d9...
Pregnant women who take paracetamol aren't stoking the risk of autism for their unborn children despite Donald Trump's claims of a link, according to a comprehensive review of research.
Sibling comparison trials showed no evidence of such problems, the scientists said.
www.ft.com/content/18ac...
Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has given her Nobel peace prize medal to President Donald Trump.
I wrote last month for @financialtimes.com about how Trump’s spectre loomed over the Nobel Prize awards feasts in Stockholm and Oslo.
www.ft.com/content/bb1b...
How combining AI with genetic databases can harness lessons from evolution to develop new diseases treatments.
An international collaboration using information from more than 1mn species offers potential solutions to problems from cancers to drug-resistant superbugs.
www.ft.com/content/29ec...