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Interview

Insects such as rove beetles can reveal a lot about climate change and help us fight future disease outbreaks. Image credit - Aslak Kappel Hansen
interview | environment
01 March 2021

Q&A: Climate monitoring, pandemic insight, decomposition – what insects do for us

Insects are vital to the health of our planet but they can also reveal a lot about climate change and help us fight future vector-borne disease outbreaks, says Alexey Solodovnikov, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who runs the rove beetle-dedicated Solodovnikov Lab and is a curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. 

Global food supply chains can provide some resilience against bad weather conditions, plant diseases, political disruption and wars, says Dr Tessa Avermaete. Image credit - Anne Kumps
interview | agriculture
01 February 2021

Q&A: Why shorter isn’t necessarily better when it comes to food supply chains

Fears over supermarket shortages during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic led many people to buy their food from local producers, raising the prospect of a transformation in the way people get their food in the future. But while eating locally and shorter supply chains are often viewed as a more sustainable alternative to our global food system, the reality is much more complicated, explains Dr Tessa Avermaete, a bioeconomist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

In the late 19th century a flu-like illness that caused loss of taste and smell likely came from the 'common cold' coronavirus in circulation today, according to Prof. Marc Van Ranst, an expert on coronaviruses. Image credit - Rob Stevens/KU Leuven
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health
27 January 2021

Q&A: Why history suggests Covid-19 is here to stay

A mysterious flu-like illness that caused loss of taste and smell in the late 19th century was probably caused by a coronavirus that still causes the ‘common cold’ in people today, according to Professor Marc Van Ranst at KU Leuven in Belgium, an expert on coronaviruses.

Pining down causality between online extreme speech and offline violence is very difficult, says Prof. Udupa but you can clearly identify trends and correlations. Image credit - LMU Munich
interview | social sciences | security | frontier research
18 January 2021

Q&A: Why cultural nuance matters in the fight against online extreme speech

Artificial intelligence (AI) used by governments and the corporate sector to detect and extinguish online extreme speech often misses important cultural nuance, but bringing in independent factcheckers as intermediaries could help step up the fight against online vitriol, according to Sahana Udupa, professor of media anthropology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

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.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus binds with human cells through its spike protein and researchers have recently discovered that it does this in two different ways. Image credit - rawpixel.com/ CC0 1.0
interview | coronavirus outbreak | health | frontier research
15 December 2020

Q&A: How Covid-19 hijacks human cells

The virus that causes Covid-19 hijacks human cells by exploiting a ‘doorway’ that is potentially also used by other deadly viruses such as HIV, dengue and Ebola, according to recent research that may help to explain why the coronavirus is so highly infectious to a wide range of organs in the body. Dr Yohei Yamauchi, a viral cell biologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who led the research, believes that the finding could not only lead to new drugs against Covid-19, but other anti-viral treatments that could be used to save patients’ lives in future pandemics. 

Around 20% of people surveyed by Prof. Bartels reported increased levels of happiness, optimism and meaning in life since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Image credit - Meike Bartels
interview | coronavirus outbreak | frontier research
07 December 2020

Q&A: Why some people’s wellbeing has improved during the pandemic

As the social isolation compelled by the pandemic swept many of us into a flurry of panic, grief and mental funk, a section of people actually reported improved levels of wellbeing, found biological psychologist Meike Bartels, a professor of genetics and wellbeing at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Prof. Klessen says many people are not aware that our galaxy is a dynamic system, with stars and planets being born all the time. Image credit - OliverGriebl/Wikimedia, licenced under CC BY 3.0
interview | space | frontier research
03 December 2020

Q&A: It’s time to rethink the Milky Way

The Milky Way might be right on our cosmic doorstep, but a group of astronomers suspect that the way we currently study it is stunting our understanding. Professor Ralf Klessen at Heidelberg University in Germany is one of four researchers who have recently begun a six-year project, ECOGAL, to try something new: imagine our home galaxy as one huge galactic ecosystem. Prof. Klessen believes that using this lens could answer fundamental questions about how stars and planets form, and how they shape the Milky Way’s future.

Vaccines can train our innate immune system. Scientists like Christine Stabell Benn are now studying whether a TB vaccine confers protection against Covid-19. Image credit - Lone Morch
interview | health | coronavirus outbreak | frontier research
25 November 2020

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

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.

Clouds are important from a climate point of view for how they reflect and absorb sunlight, according to Professor Pier Siebesma, an atmospheric physicist. Image credit - Pier Siebesma
environment | frontier research | interview
04 November 2020

Q&A: Why clouds are still ‘one of the biggest uncertainties’ in climate change

They might be beautiful at times, but clouds are still one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in understanding how the climate will change due to global warming, explains Professor Pier Siebesma, an atmospheric physicist at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands.

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