On the UN's International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we hear from young researchers at Warwick and ask them about their hopes for their research and the importance of equality in their chosen field.

Vaccination is routine in Britain and for most the public health programmes which go alongside them are about as interesting as the sewage system. And then came Covid. Since we all now (apparently) need to be experts here’s four things you might not know about vaccines and vaccination from Dr Gareth Millward from the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick.

From Gallifrey to Tatooine, planets with multiple suns feature widely in science fiction, but there are currently only ten real ‘circumbinary’ planets identified by space scientists. Dr David Armstrong from Warwick’s Astrophysics research group considers what we know about planets with two stars – and asks if life could exist there.

Exploring habitability, on our own world and beyond, is a research priority for the University of Warwick. Ares Osborn from Warwick’s astrophysics group, explores one aspect of this topic - growing food on Mars.

Lockdown is showing us that our lifestyles, in the main our reliance on motorised methods of transportation, have an insidious and detrimental impact on our environment and ultimately our health. Rob Lillywhite, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick reviews the impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on the environment.

It is amazing that whole allotments and greenhouses full of vegetables and flowers can come from just a couple of handfuls of small, dry fragments. Dr Charlotte Allender, from Warwick’s Crop Centre, explains the importance, diversity and quite incredible resilience of seeds.

Everything, throughout the history of medicine, from the profession’s origins, to the way drugs are tested and the diagnosis of medical conditions, works on a model where the male body is the default and the female body is ‘the other’. This is not equality says Dr Sarah Hillman, Academic Clinical Fellow at Warwick Medical School and GP registrar, who wants to see changes in the way that medicine considers women.

Dr Blessing Anonye from the School of Life Sciences at Warwick, explains the role our gut bacteria play in relation to our health and considers the benefits of having specific bugs in our systems.

For the good of our health - and that of the planet - we should eat more pulses. But where would the increased supply of pulses for UK consumers come from?

If you think about a traditional Christmas dinner, there’s turkey with pigs in blankets, or maybe you prefer a nut roast. But the rest is vegetables, like carrots and sprouts, which are grown very successfully in the UK. But will this always be the case?

Antibiotics are going to stop working. With a global health crisis on our hands, scientists across the world are now trying to find alternatives to the drugs which have kept us alive for the past decade.