news 2020

Britons are keen to continue with low-carbon lifestyle choices adopted during lockdown, according to research by Cardiff University and The University of Manchester. Two wide-ranging surveys conducted by the UK Centre for Climate and Social Transformation (CAST), which is coordinated by Cardiff University, suggested lockdown had upended people's habits, from buying and travelling less, to reduced energy use and cutting down on food waste.

Global changes in land use are disrupting the balance of wild animal communities in our environment, and species that carry diseases known to infect humans appear to be benefiting, finds a new UCL-led study. The research team, led by the UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, studied evidence from 6,801 ecological communities from six continents, and found that animals known to carry pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms) that can infect humans were more common in landscapes intensively used by people.

Honorary Research Associate Sir Roland Jackson (UCL Science & Technology Studies) calls for more public recognition of Irish scientist John Tyndall, who worked alongside Louis Pasteur, made discoveries in physics and was an early thinker in the field of climate science. It is surprising that the Irish scientist John Tyndall, born 200 years ago on August 2 1820, is not better known.

PhD student Ellen Coombs (UCL Biosciences and Natural History Museum) discusses a new study on 'wonky' whale skulls, explaining that whales have evolved increasingly asymmetrical skulls and discusses the likely reasons for this. Some whales are wonky. You might not know it to look at them, but their skulls are actually incredibly asymmetrical.

Vertical farming is a type of indoor agriculture where crops are cultivated in stacked systems with water, lighting and nutrient sources carefully controlled and supported by artificial intelligence in which machines are taught to manage day-to-day horticultural tasks. Part of a rapidly growing sector, vertical farming is set to grow by 21 per cent by 2025 according to recent forecasts 1 .

The first images from Solar Orbiter, a Sun-observing mission by ESA and NASA carrying instruments proposed, designed and built at UCL, reveal omnipresent miniature solar flares near the surface of our closest star. One unique aspect of the Solar Orbiter mission is that no other spacecraft has been able to take images of the Sun's surface from a closer distance.

The skulls of toothed whales have become more asymmetric over time, according to a new study led by UCL and the Natural History Museum in London. The team also found that early ancestors of living whales had little cranial asymmetry and likely were not able to echolocate, in the findings published in BMC Biology .

Here's a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial. From a study into the risks of smokers developing more severe forms of COVID-19, to a new method for automatically detecting the 'fingerprint' of soundscapes, here is some quick-read news from across the College. Smokers more at risk? Smokers hospitalised with COVID-19 may be more likely to progress to more severe forms of the disease, including admission to intensive care.

Scientists have for the first time linked the deep Earth's water cycle to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Water, sulphur and carbon dioxide, which are cycled through the deep Earth, play a key role in the evolution of our planet - including in the formation of continents, the emergence of life, the concentration of mineral resources, and the distribution of volcanoes and earthquakes.

Modelling of the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago shows it created a world largely unsuitable for dinosaurs to live in. The asteroid, which struck the Earth off the coast of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous era 66 million years ago, has long been believed to be the cause of the demise of all dinosaur species except those that became birds.

A deep-sea soft coral garden habitat has been discovered in Greenlandic waters by scientists from UCL, ZSL and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, using an innovative and low-cost deep-sea video camera built and deployed by the team. The soft coral garden, presented in a new Frontiers in Marine Science paper, is the first habitat of this kind to have been identified and assessed in west Greenland waters.

A new study demonstrates for the first time that dolphins can learn foraging techniques outside the mother-calf bond - showing that they have a similar cultural nature to great apes. The findings, led by an international research team including academics at the University of Bristol, are published in Current Biology.

An international team, led by the University of California (Riverside) in collaboration with scientists from the Universities of Glasgow and Amsterdam, has constructed a model that reproduces a currently unrecognized general feature of photosynthesis, that can be observed across many types of photosynthetic organisms.

Measuring air quality across London could help fight COVID-19 by providing a rapid means of deciding whether to reduce public transport movement - given strong links between exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 transmission, a new study reveals. Analysis of air pollution, COVID-19 cases and fatality rates in London demonstrates a connection between increased levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5) and higher risk of viral transmission.

Water (H2O) and other volatiles (e.g. CO2 and sulphur) that are cycled through the deep Earth have played a key role in the evolution of our planet, including in the formation of continents, the onset of life, the concentration of mineral resources, and the distribution of volcanoes and earthquakes.

ESA's Sun-exploring mission Solar Orbiter, which carries instruments proposed, designed and built at UCL, has made its first close approach to the Sun on June 15, getting as close as 77 million km to the star's surface, about half the distance between the Sun and Earth. In the week following this first perihelion, the point in the orbit closest to the Sun, the mission scientists will test the spacecraft's ten science instruments to prove that Solar Orbiter's telescopes are ready for future scientific observations.

Although savanna habitats (treed grasslands) are only found in the tropics today, around 18 million years ago, during the Miocene epoch, savanna ecosystems, similar to those of modern Africa, existed in the mid latitudes of North America. At their peak - around 12 million years ago - they were comparable in their mammalian diversity to that of the Serengeti today.

New research conducted by Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Biosciences) and the Chinese Academy of Science have found that in many of the world's protected areas, non-native 'invasive species' were living close by. The human population is growing rapidly and making increasing demands on the planet for food, water and natural resources.

Protected areas across the globe are effectively keeping invasive animals at bay, but the large majority of them are at risk of invasions, finds a China-UK research team involving UCL. The research, led by the Chinese Academy of Science and published , show that for most protected areas, there is an invasive animal species living less than 10km away that is well suited to the protected area's environment.

Urban red foxes are becoming more similar to domesticated dogs as they adapt to their city environment, according to a new analysis. Credit Sean Page A team led by Dr Kevin Parsons, of the University of Glasgow's Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, has carried out an analysis into the differences between urban and rural red foxes in the UK.