by Nina Rzechorzek (University of Edinburgh, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 How do nerve cells die? Many human diseases involve degeneration of the nervous system – a system of interconnecting nerve cells, allowing us to sense and respond to our environment. All of these disorders are incurable and fatal. Most of them share a common feature – aggregation of abnormal protein within nerve cells.

by Gráinne Long (MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 Cardiovascular disease (CVD) describes any disease that affects the heart or blood vessels, and is currently the leading cause of death in women world-wide. Now complications during pregnancy can be used as an early indicator to identify women at high risk of future cardiovascular disease.

by Robert Hoskin (University of Sheffield, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 To what extent do biological and environmental factors influence how an organism develops? This question, often framed as the ‘nature-nurture debate’, is one of the most fundamental problems that science has to address.

By Katarzyna Makowska (University of Leeds, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 Brian J. McHugh and colleagues from University of Edinburgh and King’s College London have discovered a one-protein switch that makes normal lung cells behave like metastatic cancer cells. This exciting finding, published in PLOS One in July 2012, brings us closer to conquering lung cancer.

By David Daversa (Institute of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 Most people may not think very much about reasons explaining the shape of our feet. For evolutionary biologists and designers of prosthetic legs however, this topic is of major interest.

By Luisa Robbez-Masson (Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University, London, UK) Short-listed for Access to Understanding 2013 Oestrogen is a female hormone, produced in the ovaries, that stimulates the formation of the female sexual characteristics at puberty. It also triggers the growth of the breast tissues during the reproductive cycle and during pregnancy.

This post is by our guest, Dr Stephen Pinfield, a Senior Lecturer in the Information School at the University of Sheffield.

To start, I should say that all at Europe PMC support Open Access. This is just a short list of some issues that can be frustrating… 1.    The often incorrect definition of green and gold routes to Open Access I am a relative newcomer to Open Access having only been working in this area for a couple of years.

We’re delighted that 4 new funders have joined Europe PMC, bringing the total to 24! The new funders are: Worldwide Cancer Research (formerly AICR), who fund research into the causes of cancer. The AICR is UK-based, but funds projects all around the world, supporting the best scientists wherever they are.

I was at the EMBO meeting in Amsterdam earlier this week, with a poster about Europe PMC. Before I get onto that, three brief observations from the conference: 1. The plenary lecture was by Kai Simons, of lipid raft fame. Professor Simons gave a fascinating history of the development of this area of research.