Month: November 2020

Black carbon and other pollution seeds clouds. We’re just starting to understand the climate implications

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Clouds that form in a polluted area will have different properties from those that form around natural particles such as desert dust. Image credit: Pixabay/Pixabay Licence

Particles swirling around our atmosphere add to climate change, yet much about how they interact with sunlight and influence the seeding of clouds remains puzzling. Studies are lifting the lid on how these tiny particles influence something as big as climate by analysing them from jet aircraft, satellites and ground measurements.  The leading cause of climate change is rising levels of carbon dioxide in the … Read more

The genetics of side-effects

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Henk-Jan Guchelaar knows all too well the serious problems that the side–effects of medication can cause. As a professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he has spent the last two decades trying to get the link between medicine and our genes recognised more widely.  The stories he hears from patients and their families bring home … Read more

Q&A: How vaccines can strengthen immune response beyond a specific disease

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Live vaccines can give health effects beyond just protecting us from a specific disease and may even help us combat other infections such as Covid-19, according to Christine Stabell Benn, a professor in global health at the University of Southern Denmark. We often think about vaccines protecting us against a specific disease – training the … Read more

3-D printed corals, new bioreactors to boost microalgae production for biofuels

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The structure of coral polyps provide an ideal habitat for colonies of Symbiodinium sp. algae to grow. Image credit - Dr Wangpraseurt

by Fintan Burke Using light as an energy source, photosynthetic microalgae can be used to produce products like biofuels and cosmetics. But algae grown in a reactor block out the light on which they feed. New reactor designs could solve this problem and help the industry move forward. Photosynthetic algae – tiny algae that use light … Read more

Mushroom cultivation produces three times its weight in waste. It’s now being turned into burgers and fertiliser

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Mushroom growing matter makes great compost but contains a lot of water, making it heavy and unprofitable to transport, so it currently goes to waste. Image credit - needpix.com//licenced under CC0

Cultivating mushrooms produces a lot of waste. For every kilogram of mushrooms produced, about three kilograms of soil-like material containing straw, manure and peat is left behind. In the EU, this results in more than 3 billion kilograms of waste per year. Managing this waste is a challenge. Although it is rich in organic matter, and therefore useful as … Read more