The beginning of January witnessed the launch of the 2nd season of the popular science series about research conducted at TUL.

There would be no computer science without physics. The thought seems trivial. High schools students are already aware that without a proper set of equipment you could forget about any kind of information processing.

Posed this way, the simplest answer to the question is 'no'. The disease is incurable to a large extent and each year, millions of people die of it. At the same time, 'the war against cancer', which has brought biologists, chemists, physicists and medical doctors together is ever encompassing. In the recent years, mathematicians have joined in their forces.

'All the science is either physics or stamp collecting'. These rather controversial statement is attributed to Ernest Rutherford. A New Zealander, 1908 Nobel Prize laureate for his studies on radioactive decay, he is by many considered to be the father of nuclear physics. Doubtless, someone who made an enormous contribution to the advancement of science.

Contemporary civilization is inextricably linked with polymer materials. Commonly used in many branches of technology or medicine, they are frequently associated exclusively with plastics, which is wrong because many live organisms produce environment friendly biopolymers.

It may seem incongruous that on a planet where water covers 72% of its surface people should be dying from its shortage. The primary reason for that is that 97% of Earth's water is sea and ocean water that has a significant degree of salinity and is unfit for direct human consumption.

'Science, research projects, cooperation' is an information booklet where the main research areas, research projects underway, and selected scientific achievements of the University's departments are presented.

One of the most common symptoms of book, drawings and photographs degradation, especially those dated back to the cusp of the 20th century, is rusty brown discolouration known as paper foxing.

Robot-assisted cardiac surgery is becoming commonplace. Surgical procedures are performed not by robots, as you may have expected, but by doctors - surgeons with a hand-held input device (what would be a joystick in computer games).

How do you imagine the academia in 30 years' time? I asked this question to panelists during the 2017 Innoshare conference, a record of which is available here. The panelists were in agreement - universities are in for a major change.