Futurity.org » University of Leeds

Are Europe’s wild bees bouncing back?

Chris Bunting-U. Leeds — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:46:57 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants in Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have slowed in recent years.

Researchers found evidence of dramatic reductions in the diversity of species ibetween the 1950s and 1980s, but researchers say the picture brightened markedly after 1990, with a slowdown in local and national biodiversity losses among bees, hoverflies, and wild plants.

Kids aren’t kind to chubby cartoons

Rachel Barson-Leeds — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:55:29 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — Very young children appear to reject storybook characters who are overweight as potential friends, a study shows.

Researchers asked children in the UK to rate their choices between characters that were drawn as overweight, normal weight, or disabled. They found that children voiced more negative views about the fictional book character “fat Alfie”.

Kids admitted to ICU on weekends as likely to survive

Chris Bunting-U. Leeds — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:54:46 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — Children in the UK who are admitted to intensive care units after hours face no greater risk of dying than children arriving during normal working hours, experts say.

However, mortality rates are significantly higher in the winter, even after taking into account added health risks for children in the colder months, new research suggests.

Saving energy could raise infection risks

Chris Bunting-U. Leeds — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:48:47 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — The chance of infection in some hospital wards varies dramatically according to whether the windows are left open or not, researchers find.

A research team studied airflow in a “Nightingale” ward—a classic hospital ward design that traditionally accommodates two rows of up to 30 beds—by using tracer gases to simulate how airborne infections spread.

Soil mites rescued by rapid evolution

Richard Mellor-Leeds — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:43:22 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — A recent study involving soil mites overturns the common assumption that evolution only occurs gradually over hundreds or thousands of years.

Researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations, leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size.

Did phosphorous from space spark life on Earth?

Richard Mellor-Leeds — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:14:04 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — Experiments suggest that unusual phosphorus chemicals from meteorites could have given power to Earth’s “primordial soup.”

While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.

This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.

Dietary fiber cuts risk of first stroke

Richard Mellor-Leeds — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:05:12 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) — Just seven grams more dietary fiber each day can lower the risk of first-time stroke by seven percent, according to new research.

This is the equivalent of one serving of whole-wheat pasta and two servings of fruits or vegetables.

Gender gaps linger in reading and math

Rachel Barson-Leeds — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:43:43 +0000

U. LEEDS (UK) / U. MISSOURI (US) — Twice as many boys are in the world’s top one percent of math students, but girls outdo boys in reading by an even larger margin.

Wide gaps in achievement between boys and girls in math are more common in economically developed countries, where considerable efforts are typically being made to promote equality and encourage more girls to engage in STEM subjects. The gap in achievement in math in the UK is one of the widest in the world, along with countries such as the US, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Bumble bee loss threatens food security

Ken Branson-Rutgers — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:27:07 +0000

RUTGERS (US) — Wild pollinators are just as important, and often more efficient, at pollinating crops than domestic honey bee colonies, but bumble bee colonies are vanishing.

“This will be a surprise to the agricultural establishment,” says Rachael Winfree, professor of ecology, evolution, and natural resources in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, who was involved in the two new studies.

Basic physics may speed up climate modeling

Kevin Stacey-Brown — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:12:03 +0000

BROWN / U. LEEDS (US) — A new approach that uses basic physics to simulate key elements of climate change may be more effective than methods that “follow every little swirl of water or air,” researchers say.

The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, shows that a technique called direct statistical simulation dramatically reduces the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The process does a good job of modeling fluid jets, fast-moving flows that form naturally in oceans and in the atmosphere. The findings are a key step toward bringing powerful statistical models rooted in basic physics to bear on climate science.