Dutch youth are less informed about democracy than peers in similar countries. This is evident from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), an international survey conducted in 24 countries on citizenship among second-year high school students. The Dutch p … | Continue reading
New research led by AUT academics shows how to enhance early childhood education for Samoan pepe meamea (infants and toddlers)—the majority of whom are taught in English-medium centers. | Continue reading
How do animals make decisions when faced with competing demands, and how have decision making processes evolved over time? In a recent publication in Biology Letters, Tina Barbasch, a postdoctoral researcher at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and Alison Bell (GND … | Continue reading
As the climate, demographics and land usage continue to change, tribal communities in Oklahoma are increasingly at risk of severe weather. A recent study led by Yang Hong with the University of Oklahoma examines these changes and the risks they pose. | Continue reading
Plastic pollution is a global problem and Dutch rivers are no exception. Anyone who has ever walked along their banks will know the sight of bottles, caps and food packaging. But some of that litter may originate from elsewhere. How much plastic waste is transported and deposited … | Continue reading
Just over 5 miles from where folklore has long claimed Vikings scribbled Scandinavian etchings on a runestone, Erica Sawatzke surveys thousands of chirping baby birds in her long barn. | Continue reading
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to reshape the workforce, with almost half of Australian workers willing to sacrifice part of their annual salary to work from home. | Continue reading
Nineteen million years ago, during a time known as the early Miocene, massive ice sheets in Antarctica rapidly and repeatedly grew and receded. The Miocene is widely considered a potential analog for Earth's climate in the coming century, should humanity remain on its current car … | Continue reading
Spain produces 50% of the world's cork and 30% of all cork stoppers. Cork is a natural polymer which has been a crucial element used to seal bottles, being of great importance for the wine industry. However, a major challenge is the appearance of the "corked wine" aroma, caused b … | Continue reading
New research has exposed how food charity in schools is becoming mainstreamed across England amidst the cost-of-living crisis, welfare cutbacks, and entrenched poverty. | Continue reading
The more time pre-schoolers spent in childcare during the first year of the pandemic, the more their vocabulary grew, a new study has found. | Continue reading
Observations during a stellar occultation detected the presence of evolving material orbiting around Centaur (2060) Chiron, rather than a two-ring system interpretation, according to a paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Amanda Sickafoose. | Continue reading
Farmland often harbors a multitude of pathogens which attack plants and reduce yields. A Swiss research team has now shown that inoculating the soil with mycorrhizal fungi can help maintain or even improve yields without using additional fertilizers or pesticides. In a large-scal … | Continue reading
The Cascade Volcanic Arc stretches from Northern California to southern British Columbia and contains more than a dozen volcanoes. The U.S. Geological Survey classifies 11 of them, including Mount Baker and Mount Hood, as "very high threat," meaning they pose significant hazards … | Continue reading
England's only resident population of bottlenose dolphins is under serious threat from a combination of human activity, environmental pollution and difficulties in rearing young that survive into adulthood, according to new research. | Continue reading
Rates of suicide in Aotearoa have remained stubbornly high, despite government efforts to address the issue through the suicide prevention strategy and action plan and other measures. | Continue reading
As many companies aim to build diverse workforces, candidates from historically marginalized communities continue to report unfair recruitment practices and limited opportunities. Building an equitable organization starts during the hiring process, with potential supervisors play … | Continue reading
In 1783, the City of London was gripped by a court case which symbolized the brutal economics of slavery. Two years previously, the Liverpool slave ship Zong had set out from Accra, in present-day Ghana, with 442 men, women and children crammed in its hold. | Continue reading
Eight years ago, the world agreed to an ambitious target in the Paris Agreement: hold warming to 1.5°C to limit further dangerous levels of climate change. | Continue reading
With the growing human population placing enormous pressure on food resources, it is estimated that by 2030 there will be an additional half a billion people to feed. This, combined with the rising cost of living, has amassed worldwide concern for the future of food security. | Continue reading
Extreme weather seasons are putting Australia's energy systems more at risk of sabotage, the government's annual Climate Change Statement warns. | Continue reading
Who could have imagined how quickly we would return to pre-COVID routines? | Continue reading
Hygiene poverty is a pervasive and hidden problem in Ireland and cuts across all income levels, according to the first comprehensive study of the issue in Ireland. | Continue reading
Big businesses like to tell us that, as consumers, we all pay for food theft. We've been sold a narrative that as consumers who don't steal, we pay for the theft of food by others on our grocery receipts. | Continue reading
In 2021, Health Canada announced a freeze on changing maximum residue limits (MRLs)—the maximum allowable pesticide residues acceptable under Canadian law. This decision followed substantial public outcry following Canada's most widely used weed killer glyphosate's proposed MRL i … | Continue reading
Human aging may have been influenced by millions of years of dinosaur domination according to a new theory from a leading aging expert. The 'longevity bottleneck' hypothesis has been proposed by Professor Joao Pedro de Magalhaes from the University of Birmingham in a new study pu … | Continue reading
Alex Gutierrez worked for MUR Shipping and its predecessors for nearly 30 years. But in 2018 he was told, in line with company policy, it was time to set a retirement date. | Continue reading
The costs of environmental pollution caused by plastics in cigarette butts and packaging amount to an estimated US $26 billion every year or US $186 billion every 10 years—adjusted for inflation—in waste management and marine ecosystem damage worldwide, finds a data analysis publ … | Continue reading
The idea of irreversible inhibitors adhering permanently to a target protein has gained increasing attention for application in potential drug development. However, one of many hurdles is the possibility of protein mutations making otherwise effective drugs pharmacologically inac … | Continue reading
The scientific worldview has made great contributions to humanity's flourishing. But, as science advances into territory once firmly held by religion—attempting to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life and consciousness—science communication often paints a fair … | Continue reading
As this year's UN climate summit (COP28) gets under way in Dubai, scientists studying Earth's frozen regions have been delivering an urgent call for action to policy makers. But is anyone listening? | Continue reading
When Hurricane Maria struck the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica in 2017, it caused the kind of devastation which is unthinkable to larger countries. The Category 5 hurricane damaged 98% of building roofs and caused US$1.2 billion (£950 million) in damage. Dominica effectivel … | Continue reading
About 350 million people across Africa speak one or more of the 500 Bantu languages. New genetic analysis of modern and ancient individuals suggests that these populations probably originated in western Africa and then moved south and east in several waves. The study has been pub … | Continue reading
We are seeing more Indigenous businesses in Australia. This is important, given these businesses produce social impact, support Indigenous economic self-determination and maintain strong levels of Indigenous employment. | Continue reading
Icelanders are no strangers to volcanic eruptions, but right now the country waits in a state of limbo. | Continue reading
Many of us were anxious and fearful during the COVID pandemic, but we've probably started to feel a lot better since lockdowns have stopped and life looks more like it did previously. | Continue reading
The record storm surge in October 2023 caused severe damage to the German Baltic coast. Effective adaptation scenarios to rising sea levels are, therefore, becoming increasingly urgent. In two recent studies, researchers at Kiel University have modeled both the flooding extent al … | Continue reading
For nearly fifty years, astronomers have come up empty-handed in their search for stars within the sprawling structure known as the Magellanic Stream. A colossal ribbon of gas, the Magellanic Stream spans nearly 300 moon diameters across the Southern Hemisphere's sky, trailing be … | Continue reading
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the speed with which available health and safety information evolved was novel to most people around the world. To assess how the public handled the changing guidance, an international research team compared information consumption among citizens of … | Continue reading
From precise inkjet printing to clear vision through spectacle lenses—the influence of droplets and their movement shapes numerous areas of our daily lives. While droplets should remain precisely in place on inkjet prints, it is desirable that they move quickly across the surface … | Continue reading
The Second Plague Pandemic of the mid-14th century, also known as the Black Death, killed 30–60% of the European population and profoundly changed the course of European history. New research led by Penn State and the University of Adelaide suggests that this plague, potentially … | Continue reading
Optoelectronics detect or emit light and are used in a variety of devices in many different industries. These devices have historically relied on thin transistors, which are small semiconductors that control the movement of electrons and photons made out of graphene and other two … | Continue reading
Plants have two main uptake mechanisms to obtain iron (Fe) from the soils. The type of strategy employed depends on the botanical classification of the plant. In the so-called strategy-I mechanism, plants must first reduce the trivalent iron (Fe3+) into bivalent iron (Fe2+). Only … | Continue reading
Many people are keen on making healthy as well as sustainable food choices, and they often intuitively equate "healthy" with being "sustainable." A study by researchers at the University of Konstanz, the Johannes Kepler University Linz, and the Hamburg University of Applied Scien … | Continue reading
Quantum technologies are currently maturing at a breath-taking pace. These technologies exploit principles of quantum mechanics in suitably engineered systems, with bright prospects such as boosting computational efficiencies or communication security well beyond what is possible … | Continue reading
A team of microbiologists at McGill University's Redpath Museum, working with a colleague at Tattoo Lounge MTL, has investigated changes to the skin microbiome when a person has an ear pierced and a metal object inserted into the puncture. In their study, reported in the journal … | Continue reading
A team of evolutionary biologists and limnologists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. has described the synchronous bioluminescent signals they observed being produced by a type of marine ostracod (Crustacea; Luxorina). In their paper published in the journal Proce … | Continue reading
Blood tests are a common, yet often painful, step in health care. But what if we could skip the needles altogether? Saliva and blood contain many of the same biomarkers, and collecting spit is as simple as drooling into a container. Researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have devel … | Continue reading