Category Archives: Research

By a nose: Australian science prize goes to team who use odours to distract predators from endangered species

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Researchers discover how to use ‘olfactory misinformation’ to protect native animals and farmers’ crops

Peter Banks’ remarkable road to a prestigious Eureka prize began nearly two decades ago as he watched rodents escape predators and wondered: why were the mice peeing everywhere?

“They were just putting their smell everywhere,” the ecologist said. “And I went, ‘how about if we use that principle of the smell of prey being everywhere to stop predators from finding their food?’”

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Male UK university students are ‘less macho’ when sharing flats with women

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Researchers have found the competitiveness of men living in mixed flats on UK campuses significantly decreased

Living with female flatmates at university makes male students less “macho”, new research from Essex University and Australia’s University of Technology Sydney has found.

The study, which followed a cohort of students at a UK university living in campus halls of residence over a one-year period, revealed that men living in mixed flats with female flatmates exhibited a significant decrease in competitiveness. There was no effect on women.

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Teenagers displaying ‘problematic phone use’ more likely to be depressed

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About one in five teenagers aged 16-18 display problematic behaviour with their phones, study finds

Teenagers who fall prey to “problematic smartphone use” are more likely to suffer from insomnia, anxiety and depression, a new study suggests.

About one in five teenagers aged 16-18 displayed problematic behaviour with their phones, with many saying they wanted help cutting down, experts from King’s College London found.

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Live comedy in UK has become serious business worth £1bn a year, study claims

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Researchers say standups’ contribution is unsung, and hope findings will help to bolster the industry’s credibility

The live comedy industry in the UK contributes more than £1bn to the economy every year, according to a study by Brunel University London.

In the first project of its kind, researchers calculated the industry’s annual value at £1bn, based on an estimated 3,000 workers in the sector, surveying more than 350 comedians, promoters, producers, venue managers and agents.

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‘Africa’s most resilient lion’ and his brother filmed making record-breaking swim across dangerous African river

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A team led by an Australian researcher captured the pair swimming about 1.5km after two failed attempts

A record-breaking swim by two lion brothers across a predator-filled African river has been documented by a team led by a researcher from an Australian university.

The two-male lion coalition was filmed crossing the Kazinga Channel in Uganda at night using high-definition heat detection cameras on drones.

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Prostate cancer screening methods trialled in ‘pivotal moment’

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Transform project has potential to reduce deaths from the disease by 40%, savings thousands of lives a year in UK

Methods of screening men for prostate cancer will be trialled in an attempt to save thousands of lives in the UK each year, in what has been hailed as a “pivotal moment” by experts.

The £42m project, known as Transform, will compare various screening methods to current NHS diagnostic processes, which can include blood tests, physical examinations and biopsies.

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UK science minister apologises and pays damages after academic’s libel action

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Michelle Donelan had accused two members of Research England’s advisory group of ‘sharing extremist views’ in letter to UKRI

Michelle Donelan, the science minister, has apologised and paid damages after accusing two academics of “sharing extremist views” and one of them of supporting Hamas.

In a statement posted on X, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology said she had deleted a tweet and letter published last year, and accepted what she termed a “clarification” from one of the academics, Prof Kate Sang at Heriot-Watt university in Edinburgh.

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Scientists unearth mysteries of giant, moving Moroccan star dune

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Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers find

They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.

Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert.

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Researchers study brain activity of surgeons for signs of cognitive overload

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Team at Imperial College London say techniques could be used to flag warning signs during surgery

It is a high-stakes scenario for any surgeon: a 65-year-old male patient with a high BMI and a heart condition is undergoing emergency surgery for a perforated appendix.

An internal bleed has been detected, an anaesthetics monitor is malfunctioning and various bleepers are sounding – before an urgent call comes in about an ectopic pregnancy on another ward.

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Scientist fed classified information to China, says Canada intelligence report

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Report says Xiangguo Qiu secretly worked with Wuhan Institute for Virology and posed a ‘threat to Canada’s economic security’

A leading research scientist at Canada’s highest-security laboratory provided confidential scientific information to Chinese institutions, met secretly with officials and posed “a realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security” according to newly released intelligence reports.

The dismissal of Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, has been shrouded in mystery ever since the couple were escorted from Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in 2019 and formally fired two years later.

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Academics in US, UK and Australia collaborated on drone research with Iranian university close to regime

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Exclusive: work by researchers from western universities and counterparts at Sharif University considered potentially ‘very dangerous’ by experts

Academics in the UK, Australia and the US collaborated on research related to drone technology with an Iranian university that is under international financial sanctions and known for its close ties to the military, the Guardian can reveal.

The collaborative research was described by one security expert as having direct military applications, while another called it potentially “very dangerous”. Iranian-made drones have been responsible for a number of deadly attacks in the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, and their development is known to be a top priority for the government in Tehran.

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Academic paper based on Uyghur genetic data retracted over ethical concerns

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Exclusive: Study published in 2019 used blood and saliva samples from 203 Uyghur and Kazakh people living in Xinjiang capital

Concerns have been raised that academic publishers may not be doing enough to vet the ethical standards of research they publish, after a paper based on genetic data from China’s Uyghur population was retracted and questions were raised about several others including one that is currently published by Oxford University Press.

In June, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publisher, retracted an article entitled “Analysis of Uyghur and Kazakh populations using the Precision ID Ancestry Panel” that had been published in 2019.

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‘Alarming’: convincing AI vaccine and vaping disinformation generated by Australian researchers

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Experiment produced fake images, patient and doctor testimonials and video in just over an hour

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to generate more than 100 blog posts of health disinformation in multiple languages, an “alarming” experiment that has prompted them to call for stronger industry accountability.

Artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT contain safeguards that stop it from responding to prompts about illegal or harmful activities, such as how to buy illicit drugs.

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Tongue-twisters could be used to gauge alcohol-intoxication levels, study finds

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Method could be used to stop people from unlocking cars or to support bartenders serving alcohol

Whether it is the story of Peter Piper and his pickled peppers or a woman selling sea shells on the seashore, tongue-twisters tackled when sober can sound rather different after a drink.

Now researchers believe such changes, in particular those relating to pitch and frequency, could be used to alert people to their level of intoxication.

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UK’s years out of EU Horizon programme did ‘untold damage’, say scientists

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Relief at rejoining flagship research scheme tempered by anger over loss of top academics since Brexit

Britain may have rescued its scientific fortunes with a last-minute decision to rejoin the EU’s Horizon research programme – but the move should not be treated as a cause for jubilation, scientists have warned.

The sluggish pace at which the agreement was reached has had too severe an impact on UK research for widespread elation, say many British researchers, who believe that science in this country suffered a major blow after being locked out of the £82bn programme for almost three years since Brexit. Putting it right has taken far too long, they argue.

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AMA tells University of Sydney to ‘read the room’ over research funded by gambling industry

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Head of Australian Medical Association says university should 'reflect on the credibility’ of industry-funded studies

The Australian Medical Association has demanded the University of Sydney “read the room” and reconsider its decision to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from the gambling industry, while the Greens want the money immediately returned.

The university’s Centre of Excellence in Gambling Research was launched this week after receiving a $600,000 funding commitment from the International Center for Responsible Gaming (ICRG), which the university has described as “a global leader in research and education on gambling disorder and responsible gambling”.

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British scientists can request grants if UK rejoins EU’s £85bn Horizon scheme

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‘Expected’ return could help retain scientists and researchers lost after grants were cancelled in Brexit row

British scientists and academic researchers will be able to reapply to the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) for grants if, as expected, the UK rejoins the flagship Horizon European programme, it has been confirmed.

The re-entry comes almost a year after 115 grants approved for British candidates were terminated by the council because of the delay in ratifying the UK’s associate membership of the £85bn Horizon funding scheme.

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Model embryo with heartbeat replicates cells in early pregnancy

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Exclusive: Scientists used stem cells to create the structures, which were unable to develop into a foetus

Scientists have created a model human embryo with a heartbeat and traces of blood in an advance that offers an extraordinary window into the first weeks of life.

The synthetic structure, created from human stem cells without the need for eggs, sperm or fertilisation, replicated some of the cells and structures that would typically appear in the third and fourth week of pregnancy. But it was specifically designed to lack the tissues that go on to form the placenta and yolk sac in a natural embryo, meaning that it did not have the theoretical potential of developing into a foetus.

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China overtakes US in contributions to nature and science journals

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Citations of Chinese research have risen because of sequencing of Covid-19 genome

China has overtaken the US to become the biggest contributor to nature-science journals, in a sign of the country’s growing influence in the world of academic research.

The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences.

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British science will not flourish outside EU’s Horizon scheme, academics warn

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Experts insist successes of Brussels’ €95bn programme could never be replicated by a UK-only substitute

Leading UK scientists have dismissed government plans to provide a UK alternative to the EU’s €95bn research and innovation programme, Horizon, saying that being a member of a major international programme is essential to the country’s future.

Last week, in an attempt to reassure the science sector, the government announced plans to set up a £14bn post-Brexit alternative to the UK’s membership of Horizon, which would come into operation if ministers could not agree on the terms of an “associate membership” of the EU scheme with Brussels.

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