Throughout history, gamblers have turned to science in their search for profitable betting strategies. But gambling has also had a huge impact on scientific research, shaping everything from probability to game theory, and chaos theory to artificial intelligence.

In the sugarcane fields of Nicaragua, young men work in the scorching heat for 8-12 hours a day cutting down lofty canes with a machete. It’s backbreaking work – in a typical shift they may lose more than 2kg in body weight. The men drink water or electrolyte drinks and take respite in the shade when they can, but this is often not possible. Such physically demanding work can be expected to have a toll. But increasingly worrying numbers of them are being struck down with chronic kidney disease of unknown cause, a long-term condition which will eventually take many of their lives.

Are we facing an epidemic of harmful anal sex, brought on only because of the availability of online porn? This is what you’d think from reading a recent policy note (PDF) from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in support of the government’s aim to require all pornographic websites to use age verification by default.

ResearchGate: What were your experiences publishing research during the Ebola outbreak in 1976? 

Tuberculosis (TB) should be a disease of the past, sadly it is very much a disease of the present. We’ve known about it since ancient times yet it is the leading cause of death through a single infectious disease in the world today, causing 1.5 million deaths every year. 

In a favela in Rio de Janeiro recently, a 16-year-old girl woke up in a house she did not know, surrounded by more than thirty men, some armed, who claimed to have had sex with her. She did not remember what had happened after going to her boyfriend’s house the night before. After waking up from a drug-induced state of unconsciousness, she went home wearing men’s clothes and didn’t mention anything to her family.

Have you ever wondered why there is not an effective vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), a disease that kills one and half million people each and every year? Or why having an episode of TB does not give protection against a new infection like other diseases such a measles? The answer lies in the fact that TB is an ancient disease and the bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) has, over the millennia, evolved clever ways of evading the human immune system.

Where are you at the moment? I’m in the city of Recife, on the eastern tip of Brazil. It’s the capital of Pernambuco, the state at the centre of the Zika epidemic. Was anyone prepared for this?

Zika has caught the world by surprise. The declaration by the World Health Organization that the recent cluster of microcephaly cases and other neurological disorders constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, shows the seriousness of the situation. The virus is transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Vector control should be, and is, the focus for stopping the spread of Zika. But will current control methods work?

Tuberculosis (TB) has been known to mankind since ancient times, and is likely to have caused more deaths in human history than any other infectious disease. Unlike HIV and malaria, globally rates of disease are falling very slowly and last year it once more became the leading cause of death due to a single infectious disease, causing 1.5 million deaths every year. Despite its importance, there is great uncertainty about the transmission of M.tb (the infection causing TB disease) – where it happens and who infects whom.