News 2019

The chemistry of drip waters that form stalagmites and stalactites in caves around the world have given researchers an insight into our past climate. In the first ever global analysis of cave drip water, an international team, led by Andy Baker at UNSW Australia and including scientists from Cardiff University, have explored how stalagmites and stalactites can show how groundwater resources have recharged in the past.

The findings of a research expedition to coastal Greenland which examined, for the first time, how melting ice is affecting supplies of nutrients to the oceans has been published in the journal Progress in Oceanography. The European Research Council-funded expedition on board the RSS Discovery took place during the summer of 2017.

New research led by climate scientists from the University of Bristol suggests that the representation of clouds in climate models is as, or more, important than the amount of greenhouse gas emissions when it comes to projecting future Greenland ice sheet melt. Recent research shows that the whole of the Greenland ice sheet could be gone within the next thousand years, raising global sea level by more than seven metres.

Methods from 1,400 years ago could boost water availability during Lima's dry season, according to new Imperial College London research. Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains , the people of Peru 's coastal region rely on surface water from the Andes for drinking water, industry, and animal and crop farming.

Researchers have found no link between exposure to emissions from municipal waste incinerators (MWIs) and infant deaths or reduced foetal growth. However, they show living closer to the incinerators themselves is associated with a very small increase in the risk of some birth defects, compared to the general population.

Pictures of the earth's water cycle used in education and research throughout the world are in urgent need of updating to show the effects of human interference, according to new analysis by an international team of hydrology experts. Leaving humans out of the picture, the researchers argue, contributes to a basic lack of awareness of how humans relate to water on Earth - and a false sense of security about future availability of this essential and scarce resource.

Thousands of annual heat-related deaths could be potentially avoided in major US cities if global temperatures are limited to the Paris Climate Goals compared with current climate commitments, a new study led by the University of Bristol has found. The research, published today in the journal Science Advances , is highly relevant to decisions about strengthening national climate actions in 2020, when the next round of climate pledges is due in 2020.

Imperial academics have developed low-cost, smartphone-linked, eco-friendly spoilage sensors for meat and fish packaging. These sensors are cheap enough that we hope supermarkets could use them within three years. Dr Firat Güder Department of Bioengineering The researchers say the new sensors could help detect spoilage and reduce food waste for supermarkets and consumers.

Many EU nationals do not trust the UK government's settled status scheme and are being pushed to apply for British citizenship to secure the position of their families, new research by the University of Birmingham's Eurochildren project has found. Eurochildren, which is researching the lives of EU citizens in the UK, has released three new reports covering the legal, statistical and sociological aspects of the impact of Brexit on EU families.

Improvements in water quality could reduce the ecological impact of climate change on rivers, finds a new study by Cardiff University's Water Research Institute and the University of Vermont. Warm water can affect freshwater organisms in similar ways to many pollutants: both reduce the availability of oxygen in the water.

Avoiding detection can provide significant survival advantages for prey, predators, or the military. For the first time, scientists from Bristol's Camo Lab have identified a new method to find the optimal colour to minimize or maximize detectability of a target. The study is published in a Royal Society Interface study.

The first comprehensive network of sites where crop wild relatives are found has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham. The network will help breeders develop more resilient crops and tackle challenges of global food security, as well as being important for nature conservation.

Since 2013, annual emissions of a banned chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) have increased by around 7 Australia and Switzerland. Last year, it was reported that emissions of one of the most important ozone depleting substances, CFC-11, had increased. This chemical was used primarily as a foaming agent for building insulation, refrigerators and other consumer products.

Melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, and subsequent sea level rise (SLR) this will cause, is widely recognised as posing a significant threat to coastal communities and ecosystems. Strategies and measures to mitigate and plan for the potential impacts are reliant on scientific projections of future SLR - conventionally provided using numerical modelling.

Tiny light-emitting microalgae, found in the ocean, could hold the secret to the next generation of organic solar cells, according to new research carried out at the Universities of Birmingham and Utrecht. Microalgae are probably the oldest surviving living organisms on the planet. They have evolved over billions of years to possess light harvesting systems that are up to 95 per cent efficient.

Members of the same bird species can have dramatically different responses to deforestation depending on where they live, finds a new study. Predicting a species' sensitivity to environmental changes, such as deforestation or climate change, is crucial for designing conservation strategies. These predictions are often based on a species' physical traits, and assume that all members of a species will respond the same.

Digital technology companies could reduce the carbon footprint of services like You Tube by changing how they are designed, experts say. Human-Computer Interaction researchers from the University of Bristol looked at how much electric energy was used to provide YouTube videos to people globally in 2016, to enable them to estimate the service's carbon footprint in that year.

Breakthrough 'gene silencing' technique uses naturally occurring soil bacteria to kill specific crop-destroying pests without harming other insects or the environment Non-toxic pest control could help feed growing global population, boost organic food production and drive bio-fuel production Experiments show up to 92% more crops survive with this approach compared to no pest control A University of Sussex mathematician, Dr Konstantin Blyuss , wo

Bees exposed to a neonicotinoid pesticide fly only a third of the distance that unexposed bees are able to achieve. Flight behaviour is crucial for determining how bees forage, so reduced flight performance from pesticide exposure could lead to colonies going hungry and pollination services being impacted.

Countries relying on the world's biggest and most established source of renewable electricity have seen their poverty, corruption and debt levels rise and their economy slow at significantly greater rates than nations which use other energy resources over the last three decades, a major new study has found.