Using abstract mathematics and holograms, a team of physicists working at the universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Southampton, have been able to produce knotted optical vortices.

Understanding how to control light in this way has important implications for laser technology used in wide a range of industries.

Last year, after a published paper identified security holes in the way DNA data is made publicly available, health institutes in the US and around the world removed all genetic data from public access - fearing that private genetic information could be negatively used against individuals who donated their sequence data through genetic studies.

David Cox, a North Carolina State University Ph.D. student in Computer Science, has devised a "symbolic scatter plot" tool that can help researchers more easily identify minute changes in DNA patterns that can lead to genetic disorders.

Researchers from the University College London and the University of Warwick and LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) have developed a new mathematical model of the 'mating game' to help explain why courtship is often drawn out.