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For a month, Dr Weimerskirch team's only contact with the outside world was a daily one-minute sat phone call with their base in the Kerguelen Islands'capital. Image credit - Henri Weimerskirch/CNRS
environment
28 January 2021

In the Antarctic, a scientist recruits albatrosses to pinpoint illegal fishing boats

Albatross expert Dr Henri Weimerskirch, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), turned his favourite seabirds into spies two years ago by fixing them up with loggers that could detect the radar of illegal fishing vessels. The information from this project, known as OCEAN SENTINEL, has helped governments select which parts of the ocean to patrol. But Dr Weimerskirch wanted to recruit another, possibly better, species to stealth operations. In late 2020, he returned to the remote Kerguelen Islands, in the southern Indian Ocean, to see if they would cooperate. He told Horizon about his expedition.

Wooden structures such as the ZEB Lab building in Trondheim, Norway, could dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of construction but they remain the exception in most countries. Image credit - Nicola Lolli/NERO
environment | industry
25 January 2021

They can capture more carbon than they emit. So why aren’t wooden buildings mainstream?

Four storeys high and made almost entirely of wood, the ZEB Lab building in Trondheim, Norway, had, even before it existed, sucked as much carbon from the atmosphere as it would probably produce in construction. Now, thanks to its arboreal origins, as well as to the sleek expanse of solar panels on its roof and to other energy efficiency measures, it is a carbon-negative building. In other words, from birth to demise, it will have drawn down more carbon than it emitted.

Better predictions of volcanic eruptions would help protect the lives of those living close to them. Image credit - Jorge Nava - Navart/Wikimedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
security | environment | frontier research
20 January 2021

Unravelling the when, where and how of volcanic eruptions

There are about 1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide and about 50 eruptions occur each year. But it’s still difficult to predict when and how these eruptions will happen or how they’ll unfold. Now, new insight into the physical processes inside volcanoes are giving scientists a better understanding of their behaviour, which could help protect the 1 billion people who live close to volcanoes.

Bacteria that can help buildings heal themselves have been tested on stone samples from Tintern Abbey in Wales and shown to improve the stone's microstructure without affecting colour or breathability. Image credit- Nilfanion/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>
environment | industry
19 January 2021

Buildings, tunnels and bridges could soon repair themselves

Stone and concrete structures with the ability to heal themselves in a similar way to living organisms when damaged could help to make buildings safer and last longer.

Scientists are exploring the possibilities of turning mycelium, the fungus that produces mushrooms, into a new type of building material. Image credit - Rob Hille/Wikimedia, licensed under CC SA3.0
environment
14 January 2021

Why future homes could be made of living fungus

In the summer of 2014 a strange building began to take shape just outside MoMA PS1, a contemporary art centre in New York City. It looked like someone had started building an igloo and then got carried away, so that the ice-white bricks rose into huge towers. It was a captivating sight, but the truly impressive thing about this building was not so much its looks but the fact that it had been grown. 

environment | industry
11 January 2021

Carrot cement: How root vegetables and ash could make concrete more sustainable

Concrete has become our building material of choice for countless structures such as bridges, towers and dams. But it also has a huge environmental footprint mostly due to carbon dioxide emissions from the production of cement – one of its main constituents. Researchers are now experimenting with root vegetables and recycled plastic in concrete to see whether this can make it stronger – and more sustainable – and even power streetlights or air pollution sensors.

interview | energy | environment | industry
05 January 2021

Q&A: ‘We need to reduce the ‘embodied energy’ of buildings

Retrofitting Europe’s buildings for energy efficiency is not enough to slash the carbon footprint of the construction sector and cut emissions in time to meet the Paris climate agreement goals, according to Dr Catherine De Wolf, assistant professor of design and construction management at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

With a 2020 that focused on coronavirus, we asked some of our interviewees from the year what they expect to see happen in their scientific field in 2021. Image credit - Gabriella Clare Marino/Unsplash
health | coronavirus outbreak | environment
04 January 2021

2021: Beyond coronavirus - what’s in store for science in the year ahead?

There was one science story that dominated 2020 and coronavirus is likely to remain a dominant theme in 2021. But from vaccine rollout to lessons for future pandemics and – that other big challenge that we’re facing – climate change, how will the year in science play out? We asked a selection of our interviewees about lessons from 2020 and what needs to happen in their fields in the coming year.

environment | health | space | coronavirus outbreak
17 December 2020

Twenty surprising scientific facts we learned in 2020

From corals bunkering down in deeper waters to wait out climate change stress, to how vaccines can boost our immune system beyond a specific disease – here are the 20 most surprising scientific facts that we discovered this year. 

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
environment | frontier research
30 November 2020

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

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. 

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