Planners could make greater use of urban waterways to regulate environmental temperature in our cities, according to research presented recently. Speaking at the Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas (URSULA) Conference, in Sheffield, Dr Abigail Hathway, of the University of Sheffield, will demonstrate how rivers can cool their local environment. Urban areas suffer increased […] … learn more→

The history of six large herbivores — the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox — is the subject of a study by an international group of scientists investigating how climate fluctuations and human activity affected mammal populations at the end of the last ice age. According to Beth Shapiro, the […] … learn more→

Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and Penn State. Using concentrated sunlight reduces the cost of solar power by requiring fewer solar […] … learn more→

Rebuilding American manufacturing is possible — but will require new ideas about turning lab breakthroughs into new products and a refurbished, highly skilled workforce, a group of scholars, industry leaders and government officials emphasized at a MIT conference. “The U.S. continues to be very innovative, but somehow downstream there seems to be a break,” said […] … learn more→

In research that has been released to the media, though not yet peer-reviewed, a group of independent researchers has concluded that global warming is real. The research analyses temperature data from 15 sources and was intended to directly address scientific concerns raised by skeptics, including the urban heat island effect (UHI), temperature station quality and […] … learn more→

At a first glance, university teaching seems like any other teaching, but a closer analysis shows that university teaching is closely related to research and knowledge development. For many young persons, the main aim of their studies is to receive a professional title and thus a certain kind of job. This is not so strange, […] … learn more→

Moving toward productivity, stability, sustainability, and equitabilty. … learn more→

Maxims like turn that frown upside down may annoy you when ill-timed but it seems they have some evidence-based science behind them. A growing body of research shows that your state of mind may have a significant impact on your health and well-being. The latest research to give credence to the link between state of […] … learn more→

A caesium fountain clock that keeps the United Kingdom\’s atomic time is now the most accurate long-term timekeeper in the world, according to a new evaluation of the clock that will be published in the October 2011 issue of the international scientific journal Metrologia by a team of physicists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) […] … learn more→

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don\’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm. \”How is it that people say they want creativity but […] … learn more→