Meanwhile, Dr Forrest's group has constructed an experimental set-up, described in a paper recently submitted to the Evolutionary Computation Journal, that mimics the way real immune systems identify invading pathogens.

ECONOMIST: A thousand ills require a thousand cures

Laser interferometers are looking for disturbances in their experimental set-ups that are equivalent to mere fractions of the diameter of a proton, one of the particles that make up the nucleus of an atom.

BBC: Lab tuned to gravity's 'ripples'