Higgs Boson breakthrough was UK triumph, but British physics faces'catastrophic' cuts When the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced in Stockholm in October 2013, the world was watching. Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together - the Higgs boson. The announcement, broadcast live from Sweden, was what many scientists had hoped for since a year earlier, when experiments at CERN had finally confirmed Higgs's theory by discovering the Higgs boson - hailed as one of the biggest discoveries in a generation. At the time Higgs, who has since passed away, said in a statement: I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research. Blue-sky research asks questions to understand the universe, rather than design new products.

In October, 2019, Peter Scott-Morgan (1958-2022) announced that he had evolved from Peter 1.0 to Peter 2.0. What that meant in practical terms was that, at that point, he had made enough modifications to his body that he considered himself to be something new entirely--less of a human, more of a cyborg. He wasn't yet fully robotic, but he was fast approaching it and, as he told an interviewer, there was no technology he "wouldn't consider." Scott-Morgan, a British scientist with an expertise in robotics and organizational theory, was tall and slim, with a floppy mop of blonde hair and a blindingly bright smile. He skewed full-on optimist; to scroll through his Twitter account is to be showered by exclamations of wonder and delight.

An insect-inspired flying robot with wings that buzz thanks to a new type of electric'muscle' has been developed by British scientists. The prototype weighs about 0.01lbs (5g), has a wing span of 5.9 inches (15cm) and can fly at 1.6mph. It is hoped that one day the robot will be able to look for survivors in disaster zones such as collapsed buildings, monitor hard-to-reach infrastructure and pollinate crops. Researchers at Bristol University said its wings are so efficient that they actually provide more power than an insect muscle of the same weight. 'It's very challenging to beat nature,' Dr Tim Helps, lead author of the study, told MailOnline.

Software that can determine which breast cancer patients are in the most urgent need of surgery or chemotherapy has been developed by British scientists. The artificial intelligence algorithm uses data from different studies to identify patients able to go on hormone therapy rather than require urgent surgery. Scientists created the technology as a way to ensure women get the best available treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen surgeries cancelled. It uses data from multiple international trials to pick out those whose tumours are less likely to respond to hormonal drugs and found 5 per cent were at the most risk. Software that can determine which breast cancer patients are in the most urgent need of surgery or chemotherapy has been developed by British scientists.

When Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance succumbed to the Antarctic pack ice on November 21, 1915, he and his crew began one of the most gruelling survival attempts in history. Since the explorer led his 27 men to safety more than a century ago, there has been no sign of the ship. But now, in an echo of the golden age of exploration, the race is on to the Antarctic once more – as two rival expeditions hunt for the lost vessel. A British-led team from Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, along with universities in South Africa and New Zealand, plans to launch autonomous underwater vehicles almost two miles under the ice. The multi-million pound expedition will set out in January 2019 in research ship SA Agulhas II, The Times reported.

A team of researchers in the UK have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can predict the outcome of human rights cases involving torture, degrading treatment, and privacy. The AI -- developed by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Sheffield, alongside Dr Daniel Preoţiuc-Pietro from the University of Pennsylvania -- successfully predicted the verdicts for 79% of 584 cases at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In order to reach a decision, the AI analysed case text using a machine learning algorithm, the researchers said. The algorithm looked for patterns in the text and was able to classify each case either as a "violation" or a "non-violation". To prevent bias and mislearning, the team selected an equal number of violation and non-violation cases.

An artificial intelligence "judge" that can accurately predict many of Europe's top human rights court rulings has been created by a team of computer scientists and legal experts. The AI system--developed by researchers from University College London, the University of Sheffield, and the University of Pennsylvania--parsed 584 cases which had previously been heard at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and successfully predicted 79 percent of the decisions. A machine learning algorithm was trained to search for patterns in English-language datasets relating to three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 3, concerning torture and inhuman and degrading treatment; Article 6, which protects the right to fair trial; and Article 8, on the right to a private and family life. The cases examined were equally split between those that did find rights violations and those that didn't. Despite the AI's success, the legal profession is safe for now.

A team of researchers in the UK have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can predict the outcome of human rights cases involving torture, degrading treatment, and privacy. The AI -- developed by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Sheffield, alongside Dr Daniel Preo?iuc-Pietro from the University of Pennsylvania -- successfully predicted the verdicts for 79% of 584 cases at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In order to reach a decision, the AI analysed case text using a machine learning algorithm, the researchers said. The algorithm looked for patterns in the text and was able to classify each case either as a "violation" or a "non-violation". To prevent bias and mislearning, the team selected an equal number of violation and non-violation cases.