With the Access to Understanding awards ceremony just about wrapping up, we can now announce the winners… First place was awarded to Philippa Matthews for her entry ‘Rolling back malaria: A journey through space and time’, which described research exploring the changing patterns of malaria risk across Africa. The piece was praised by our judges […]

We are excited to announce voting has now opened for Access to Understanding’s People’s Choice Award! The People’s Choice Award is an important part of the competition – since the entries are written for the public, we think they should be judged by the public. Click here or on the image below to read and vote […]

Access to Understanding is getting bigger and better every year. The 2015 science-writing competition attracted over 300 entries from all over the world. But don’t take my word for it, explore the map below to see where they came from and what they were about. Globalised Science With 227 submissions, the lion’s share of entries […]

Enter a prestigious, international science-writing competition aimed at PhD students and early career post-doctoral researchers. The winner will receive an iPad and have their entry published in eLife. Read on for more… For more information: http://EuropePMC.org/ScienceWritingCompetition Questions: Engagement@EuropePMC.org The competition is developed by the British Library, eLife and Europe PMC for Access to Understanding. It is supported by the Europe PMC […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash Life expectancy has increased continuously over the past several decades, and with it, a host of new age-related ailments have emerged as contemporary medical issues. Muscle function decreases with age, leaving increasing numbers of elderly people incapable of being physically independent. This not only has devastating personal effects but is also a […]

Image design: Serial/Trash A number of genes have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease, and Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). However, the core biological processes involved in these disorders are extremely difficult to model and this is hampering the effort to develop treatments. If we […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash Understanding how blood vessels are born and propagated is vital for the treatment of a whole host of diseases including heart disorders, diabetes and cancer. Scientists from Oxford’s Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research have begun to reveal the mechanism by which the switching on of specific genes leads to the development of […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash There is good news for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers: scientists are a step closer to predicting which patients will benefit the most from a particular type of drug using just a urine sample. Imagine being in pain whilst carrying out routine, daily tasks such as opening a door, reaching for something in the […]

By Elizabeth McAdam, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, UK Note: Elizabeth was awarded second place in this year’s Access to Understanding competition. Check back tomorrow to read her winning entry. Congratulations Elizabeth! Writing always terrified me. Growing up, I didn’t enjoy English at school; I positively hated it. It all seemed to […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash Skin is not the only thing to wrinkle with age. Our genes also show signs of ageing – a process that can lead to cancer. A new study indicates that healthy eating can prevent cancer development and explains how this works. When genes get old Thanks to modern medical advancements, our average […]

By Lucia Aronica, Max F Perutz Laboratories, Austria Note: Lucia won the first ever Access to Understanding People’s Choice award. Tomorrow the blog will feature her popular piece! My research field is epigenetics, which means that I am interested in understanding how environmental factors can influence our genes and thereby impact both our health and predisposition […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash Cancer results from an accumulation of mistakes or abnormalities in genes that normally control cell survival, growth and migration. Genes are the instruction manual for our cells, and when these instructions are altered cells may begin to multiply (proliferate) uncontrollably. The resulting mass of new cells forms the primary tumour, and when […]

By Clare Finlay, a PhD student at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Disease, King’s College London Note: Clare was highly commended for her entry. Check back tomorrow to read her brilliant summary on the blog. This is a question encountered by many a scientist, as the relevance of the receptor, enzyme or gene they have […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash After centuries of endeavour, scientists and doctors have made great strides towards improving cancer treatment. Nonetheless, while conventional therapy has undoubtedly saved innumerable lives, a worrying number of tumours remain inoperable and incurable by chemo- or radiotherapy. Thus, the search for more refined anti-cancer drugs continues, and paving the way is a […]

By Claire Sand, PhD student at King’s College London Note: Claire Sand was highly commended for her entry this year. She was a joint second-place winner in Access to Understanding 2013 competition. Check back tomorrow to read her entry. After my fantastic experience at Access to Understanding 2013, I was very keen to be involved […]

Image design: Serial/Trash Malaria claims a million lives a year, a majority of which are children, and threatens the lives of billions more within its tropical ranges. It is caused by Plasmodium, a parasite that uses mosquitoes as a way of getting in to and out of humans. Initial infection from the bite of a […]

By Aidan Maartens, Post-doc student at the Gurdon Institute  Note: Aidan was awarded third place in this year’s Access to Understanding competition. Check back tomorrow to read his winning entry! Congratulations Aidan! It ended in a pub with a group of us – some entrants, some science-communications people, and one of the judges of the competition – struggling […]

Image Source: Serial/Trash People have little trouble recognising and following the beat in a piece of music. We can even continue to play the beat in our minds once a song has finished. However, despite the ease with which we carry out such a task, the brain activity which underpins it remains a topic of […]

By Elizabeth Kirkham, PhD student at the University of Sheffield Note: Elizabeth was the winner of this year’s Access to Understanding competition. Check back tomorrow to read her winning entry! It has also been published by eLife. Congratulations Elizabeth! My background is in psychology, which means that over the years I’ve learned to steel myself against the inevitable […]

Image design: Serial/Trash New research challenges common beliefs about the origin of the disease and draws attention to the nerve cells’ ability to tidy up. Parkinson’s disease is a devastating neurological disorder where nerve cells in the brain slowly degenerate and die. The disease especially affects a certain type of nerve cell, the dopaminergic nerve […]

Last night marked the Access to Understanding 2014 science-writing competition award ceremony. At its heart, the competition is a celebration. It celebrates the commitment and enthusiasm of early career researchers to share scientific advances with an interested public audience.  It’s also a celebration that all of the articles that entrants could write about (spanning cancer to […]

We are pleased to announce the launch of our first ever People’s Choice Award for the Access to Understanding science-writing competition! This award gives you – the public – the opportunity to read our shortlisted entries and have your say. Our entrants rose to the difficult challenge of writing plain English summaries of research articles […]

The Access to Understanding science-writing competition 2014 attracted over 260 entrants. As an international competition we were thrilled to receive entries from 14 different countries. This map pinpoints the different cities around the world from which we received entries. Over 80% of our entrants were from the United Kingdom- with entries coming from as far north […]

by Emma Pewsey Winner, Access to Understanding 2013 This post is particularly aimed at those of you who are thinking about entering the Access to Understanding competition who have never entered a science writing competition before. Access to Understanding is the perfect first-time competition to enter. Unlike most other science-writing competitions, you don’t need to […]

We are thrilled that you are considering entering Europe PMC’s Access to Understanding science writing competition, in partnership with The British Library. If you are an early career researcher and have not already decided this competition is for you, let me remind you of a few elements that make this competition unique. 1. You will […]