Research News
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Better water management could halve the global food gap
Improved agricultural water management could halve the global food gap by 2050 and buffer some of the harmful climate change effects on crop yields. For the first time, scientists investigated systematically the worldwide potential to produce more food with the same amount of water by optimizing rain use and irrigation.
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Climate change will delay transatlantic flights
Planes flying between Europe and North America will be spending more time in the air due to the effects of climate change, a new study has shown.
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Recent summer temperatures in Europe are likely the warmest of the last 2 millennia
Most of Europe has experienced strong summer warming over the course of the past several decades, accompanied by severe heat waves in 2003, 2010 and 2015. New research now puts the current warmth in a 2100-year historical context using tree-ring information and historical documentary evidence to derive a new European summer temperature reconstruction.
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Penn-engineered neural networks show hope for axonal repair in the brain, with minimal disruption to brain tissue
Lab-grown neural networks have the ability to replace lost axonal tracks in the brains of patients with severe head injuries, strokes or neurodegenerative diseases and can be safely delivered with minimal disruption to brain tissue, according to new research from Penn Medicine’s department of Neurosurgical Research.
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Caltech researchers find evidence of a real ninth planet
Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the distant solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the […]
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To clean up ocean plastics focus on coasts, not the Great Pacific garbage patch
Plastic floating in the oceans is a widespread and increasing problem. Plastics including bags, bottle caps and plastic fibres from synthetic clothes wash out into the oceans from urban rivers, sewers and waste deposits.
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Saliva test to detect GHB and alcohol poisonings
Scientists working at Loughborough University, UK, and the University of Cordoba, Spain, have developed a new method for the rapid diagnosis of poisoning in apparently drunk patients. The saliva-based test offers the potential to screen for poisons commonly associated with the cheap or imitation manufacture of alcohol, and γ-hydroxybutyric acid, the so-called ‘date rape’ drug […]
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Exploring the physics of a chocolate fountain
A University College London (UCL) mathematics student has worked out the secrets of how chocolate behaves in a chocolate fountain, answering the age-old question of why the falling ‘curtain’ of chocolate surprisingly pulls inwards rather than going straight downwards. The results are published today, 25th November 2015, in European Journal of Physics. “Chocolate fountains are […]
