news 2015

A University-led project is testing ways of automatically repairing concrete without human intervention The first major trial of self-healing concrete in the UK, led by a team of researchers from the School of Engineering , is being undertaken at a site in the South Wales Valleys. The project, entitled Materials for Life (M4L), is piloting three separate concrete-healing technologies for the first time in real-world settings, with a view to incorporating them into a single system that could be used to automatically repair concrete in the built environment.

Researchers from Glasgow, Sheffield and Beijing are to work together to study the transformation of China's cities as migrants move from rural to urban environments in greater numbers. International Centre Partnership funding worth £200,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) will support 27 researchers across three institutions.

When you're prey, being able to spot and assess the threat posed by potential predators is of life-or-death importance. In a paper published today in Animal Behaviour , researchers from the University of Cambridge's Department of Psychology show that wild jackdaws recognise individual human faces, and may be able to tell whether or not predators are looking directly at them.

A new way of mapping temperatures in a city will allow local authorities to consider areas with the most vulnerable people in future heatwave plans. A University of Birmingham research project has highlighted the potential health impacts of heatwaves in urbanised areas. By modelling the 2003 heatwave the researchers were able to identify areas where city centres were up to 7°C hotter than the surrounding countryside in the West Midlands.

Research has uncovered alarming evidence of an underreported wild-meat crisis in the heart of Amazonia. Scientists from Lancaster University and Brazil ed households in two Brazilian 'prefrontier' cities - cities which are surrounded by more than 90 per cent of their original forest cover. They found virtually all urban households in these cities (Borba and Novo Aripuanã) consumed wildlife for food, including fish (99%), bushmeat (mammals and birds; 79%), turtles and tortoises (48%) and caimans (28%).