Clare Sansom

Cambridge

Physicist turned bioinformatician turned portfolio scientist, lecturer (Birkbeck and OU) and writer on science, technology and medicine. Girly swot. She/her

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Articles

Stories in glass, stitches in cloth and Easter in the kitchen

2 months ago | eastangliabylines.co.uk | Kate Viscardi |Clare Sansom

It’s a long weekend so we have lots for you today. We look at stained glass, I become an accidental pilgrim, and Clare has another delicious recipe to try. Quite how coloured glass was discovered is a matter of conjecture. Its history, though, goes back nearly 5,000 years, to Egyptian bead makers. By the 4th Century CE, the Romans were producing luxury goods in glass. The Lycurgus Cup is a particularly fine example, changing colour depending on the direction of the light shining on it.
Good news for 11 on Mothering Sunday: a Simnel cake

Mar 27, 2025 | eastangliabylines.co.uk | Clare Sansom

Simnel cake is a fruit cake with a marzipan topping, decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 11 apostles (without Judas). It is traditionally made during the seasons of Lent and Easter, often for Mothering Sunday. And … remember the Black Shuck? Any day now, he and other mythical creatures will be invading your personal space. Read all about it further down.
Studying materials in action

Feb 17, 2025 | chemistryworld.com | Clare Sansom

Experiments on battery electrodes and fuel cell catalysts while they’re being used – operando spectroscopy – can revolutionise our understanding of these crucial materials. Clare Sansom reports Definition and importance: Operando spectroscopy involves the simultaneous evaluation of the composition, structure and mechanism of materials while they are in operation.
The dynamics of fluid flow on (and off) inclined fibers

Feb 11, 2025 | phys.org | Clare Sansom

The commonplace phenomenon of liquid drops falling from a surface is—perhaps surprisingly—not yet fully understood by scientists. Understanding the complex interactions between the forces involved here would be helpful in industry, where structured packings in cooling towers must be designed to encourage droplet formation in fluid flow but coatings mixed to maintain a pristine, smooth surface.
Blood biopsies for cancer

Sep 24, 2024 | chemistryworld.com | Clare Sansom

Testing small amounts of blood for the presence of disease markers could revolutionise how we detect cancer. Clare Sansom reports Early and precise diagnosis: Liquid biopsies, which analyse blood for disease markers, offer a non-invasive method to detect cancer early and precisely, potentially transforming cancer from a killer disease to a manageable one.
ON Helix 2020 Online: Networking in the New Normal

Sep 3, 2024 | onenucleus.com | Clare Sansom

When delegates returned from the 38th annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Diego in mid-January this year, few can have imagined just how fast, and how dramatically, the biotech industry was about to change. Fewer than 10,000 cases of COVID-19 had been reported to the WHO by the end of that month, and few, other than infectious disease specialists, were taking very much notice of those reports.
Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic

Aug 18, 2024 | eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker |Clare Sansom

Thinking back to a change-of-address card from nearly forty years ago… Sunday 18 August is Poetry Bears’ Picnic Day 2024 and presents an opportunity to share some bear poems I have written over the years. Poems to be enjoyed with Fabulous Flapjack – recipe included. BearsTrue, bears are solitary and not lovable. True, I stopped buying teddy bears as the window sill filled up. True, we did not meet the bears we saw in their sunken field at Whipsnade. True, most bears live rather a long way away.
Five ways to model text using networks

Aug 5, 2024 | techxplore.com | Clare Sansom

The explosive growth of AI "chatbots" over the last few years and their ability to generate text that simulates human writing, often very accurately, has focused attention on how text is structured. One useful way of analyzing text is to think of it as a network, and methods of network analysis that are familiar to mathematicians and computer scientists can be powerful in linguistics.
A classic cake for East Anglia Bylines’ third birthday

Jul 27, 2024 | eastangliabylines.co.uk | Clare Sansom

When our esteemed editor asked me if I could bake a cake for East Anglia Bylines’ third birthday, I was flattered, but I had a difficult decision to make: what cake could possibly suit the occasion? In the end, my choice was based on imagining that EAB was an actual three-year-old. So, nothing too complicated, no unexpected ingredients, nothing difficult to digest. What could be better than an old-fashioned Victoria sponge, with jam and butter icing?
Preparing for 'Disease X': no time to lose

Jul 1, 2024 | eastangliabylines.co.uk | Clare Sansom

Fifty years ago, Professor (now Baron) Peter Piot, emeritus director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was a final-year medical student exploring options for a research career. He was advised that ‘there was no future in infectious diseases’ as, thanks to public health improvements, vaccines and anti-infective drugs, the most important and interesting problems there had been solved.