By Clare Finlay, a PhD student at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Disease, King’s College London Note: Clare was highly commended for her entry. Check back tomorrow to read her brilliant summary on the blog.

Image Source: Serial/Trash After centuries of endeavour, scientists and doctors have made great strides towards improving cancer treatment. Nonetheless, while conventional therapy has undoubtedly saved innumerable lives, a worrying number of tumours remain inoperable and incurable by chemo- or radiotherapy.

By Claire Sand, PhD student at King’s College London Note: Claire Sand was highly commended for her entry this year. She was a joint second-place winner in Access to Understanding 2013 competition. Check back tomorrow to read her entry. After my fantastic experience at Access to Understanding 2013, I was very keen to be involved again this year.

Image design: Serial/Trash Malaria claims a million lives a year, a majority of which are children, and threatens the lives of billions more within its tropical ranges.

By Aidan Maartens, Post-doc student at the Gurdon Institute  Note: Aidan was awarded third place in this year’s Access to Understa nding competition. Check back tomorrow to read his winning entry! Congratulations Aidan!

Image Source: Serial/Trash People have little trouble recognising and following the beat in a piece of music. We can even continue to play the beat in our minds once a song has finished. However, despite the ease with which we carry out such a task, the brain activity which underpins it remains a topic of investigation.

By Elizabeth Kirkham, PhD student at the University of Sheffield Note: Elizabeth was the winner of this year’s Access to Understanding competition. Check back tomorrow to read her winning entry! It has also been published by eLife. Congratulations Elizabeth!

Image design: Serial/Trash New research challenges common beliefs about the origin of the disease and draws attention to the nerve cells’ ability to tidy up. Parkinson’s disease is a devastating neurological disorder where nerve cells in the brain slowly degenerate and die. The disease especially affects a certain type of nerve cell, the dopaminergic nerve cells, which are located in a small area of the brain called the substantia nigra.

Last night marked the Access to Understanding 2014 science-writing competition award ceremony. At its heart, the competition is a celebration. It celebrates the commitment and enthusiasm of early career researchers to share scientific advances with an interested public audience.

We are pleased to announce the launch of our first ever People’s Choice Award for the Access to Understanding science-writing competition! This award gives you – the public – the opportunity to read our shortlisted entries and have your say.

The Access to Understanding science-writing competition 2014 attracted over 260 entrants. As an international competition we were thrilled to receive entries from 14 different countries. This map pinpoints the different cities around the world from which we received entries. Over 80% of our entrants were from the United Kingdom- with entries coming from as far north as Aberdeen.