Related papers: Antibiotic resistance: a physicist's view
I sketch some pressing questions in several active areas of particle physics and outline the challenges they present for the design and operation of detectors.
(transcript of a talk given by Prof.~Feshbach:) Nuclear physics has been and will be a major factor in science and technology. It makes unique and important contributions to medicine, to industry and to other sciences. Interaction with…
Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand. Over the last decades the life sciences have succeeded in…
Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics through various mechanisms, with the specific mechanism depending on the drug-bacteria pair. It remains unclear, however, which resistance mechanism best supports favorable treatment outcomes,…
We discuss the problems of consensus and unity in science. The natural sciences seem to contrast with many other areas of endeavor in that a high level of consensus seems to exist in them. However, a careful analysis of the structure of…
What is physics? What are the limits of what physics can say about the world? In seeking ever-broader theoretical `umbrellas' for physical phenomena, we are seeking unifying principles. Emergent phenomena have turned out to be some of the…
The study of microorganisms, or microbiology, has demonstrated significant development since its inception and is currently a key field of biological sciences that has a huge impact on modern society and scientific research. Over the…
Magnetic fields are everywhere in the Universe and in our everyday life and many processes are affected by their presence, generating a rich phenomenology that depends also on other possible external agents. We review here some results,…
Although we accept that Physics is, as a last resort, an experimental science, the relationship between theory and experiment is far away from being trivial. Any experiment is always explained within a determinate theoretical context and,…
Despite the spectacular achievements of molecular biology in the second half of the twentieth century and the crucial advances it permitted in cancer research, the fight against cancer has brought some disillusions. It is nowadays more and…
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
At any time, there are areas of science where we are standing at the frontier of knowledge, and can wonder whether we have reached a fundamental limit to human understanding. What is ultimately possible in physics? I will argue here that it…
In this perspective article, we discuss bacterial populations as a model system of active matter. It allows for the exploration and characterization of various phases of active matter and brings rich implications for both physics and…
What do we do when cosmology raises questions it cannot answer? These include the existence of a multiverse and the universality of the laws of physics. We cannot settle any of these issues by experiment, and this is where philosophers…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
Antimicrobial Resistance (RAM) poses a significant threat to global public health, making important medicines less useful. While the medical and biological reasons behind RAM are well studied, we still don't know enough about how false…
A review of the blind analysis technique, as used in particle physics measurements, is presented. The history of blind analyses in physics is briefly discussed. Next the dangers of "experimenter's bias" and the advantages of a blind…
The intestinal microbiota plays important roles in digestion and resistance against entero-pathogens. As with other ecosystems, its species composition is resilient against small disturbances but strong perturbations such as antibiotics can…
The rise and spread of antibiotic resistance causes worsening medical cost and mortality especially for life-threatening bacteria infections, thereby posing a major threat to global health. Prescribing behavior of physicians is one of the…