2015

(157) rss icon
Goldstein wins Batchelor Prize 2016

The G K Batchelor Prize for 2016 is awarded to Professor Raymond E. Goldstein FRS, Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Fellow of Churchill College, University of Cambridge.

Read more

Running a library on the Caribbean island of Roatan

Your website goes down and the server you host with refuses to restart it due to payment complications; your computer network crashes, completely wiping your digital cataloging software; the budgets that you’re working from are under constant threat of being slashed, or funds withdrawn permanently; sounds like the year from hell for most librarians.…

Read more

Major gaps in understanding the risks and benefits of eating fish

Source: Researchers find major gaps in understanding risks, benefits of eating fish | EurekAlert! Science News Fish tissue is rarely measured for concentrations of both harmful contaminants and healthful nutrients across a range of species and geographic regions, say a Dartmouth researcher and her colleagues who reviewed the risks and benefits of eating seafood.…

Read more

Perovskite solar cells: A new paradigm in photovoltaics

The recent August issue of MRS Bulletin – a flagship journal of the Materials Research Society – is dedicated to one of hottest topics in the world of materials science: perovskite photovoltaics, which have taken the photovoltaic world by storm in recent years, promising solar cells that deliver the highest possible efficiencies at the lowest possible cost.

Read more

Cocoa flavanols good for heart health

An EU-funded study published this week in British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) shows that consuming cocoa flavanols improves cardiovascular function and lessens the burden on the heart that comes with the ageing

Read more

A smartphone test for delirium assessment in hospital

The August International Psychogeriatrics Article of the Month is entitled “Development of a smartphone application for the objective detection of attentional deficits in delirium” by Zoë Tieges, Antaine Stíobhairt, Katie Scott, Klaudia Suchorab, Alexander Weir, Stuart Parks, Susan Shenkin and Alasdair MacLullich.…

Read more

Wising up to Caribbean frankincense

David Gill, Guest Editor of the Tree Conservation special issue of Oryx-The International Journal of Conservation, has chosen ‘Making business scents: how to harvest incense sustainably from the globally threatened lansan tree Protium attenuatum‘ as one of his editor’s picks from the issue. …

Read more

Dimensions of Family Empowerment in Work with So-Called ‘Troubled’ Families

Blog post based on an article in Social Policy and Society In the Prime Minister’s speech on 22nd June 2015, David Cameron declared that the Troubled Families Programme established under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition was “a real government success” with almost all of the 117,000 families involved in the programme having now been “turned around” and plans to replicate this success with a further 400,000 families over the next 5 years.…

Read more

What’s killing the green menace?

“The late Peter de Groot, a highly respected forest entomologist, likened the emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis to the green wrestling persona of the character Bubbles on the TV comedy series the Trailer Park Boys.…

Read more

Suitable Sheep Selection

The type of sheep that farmers breed for need to be suited to the farm they are managed on. To pick the best type of sheep, farmers need to know how their sheep can make more money for their farm.

Read more

The Secret Life of Trees

This month’s issue of Oryx-The International Journal of Conservation is dedicated to tree conservation. In this blog, Dave Gill and Rob Loveridge discuss the special issue and pay tribute to the scientists whose work is guiding the conservation of the ‘charismatic megaflora’.…

Read more

Machine learning helps computers predict near-synonyms

Choosing the best word or phrase for a given context from among candidate near-synonyms, such as “slim” and “skinny”, is something that human writers, given some experience, do naturally; but for choices with this level of granularity, it can be a difficult selection problem for computers.…

Read more

20 Years of Organised Sound: A Brief History

Issue 20/1 of Organised Sound marks the start of the journal’s twentieth year, offering the perfect opportunity to take a closer look at the formative years of OS and how the journal has developed into the focal point of electroacoustic music studies that it is today.…

Read more

Cambridge launch new open access journal – Global Health, Epidemiology and Genomics

Cambridge unveils new Open Access journal – Global Health, Epidemiology and Genomics (GHEG) Cambridge University Press is delighted to announce a major new open access journal, Global Health, Epidemiology and Genomics (GHEG), dedicated to publishing and disseminating research that addresses and increases understanding of global and population health issues through the application of population science, genomics and applied technologies.…

Read more

Corporate Responsibility: All Eyes on Human Rights

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is losing steam. Many – perhaps too many? – corporations have embraced it, but too often they seem to look at it merely as a new source for growth and profits or as an act of charity, rather than as a philosophy that transforms the way they do business.…

Read more

Can your phone make you laugh?

Examples of humorous and sometimes awkward autocorrect substitutions happen all the time. Typing ‘funny autocorrect’ into Google brings up page upon page of examples where phones seem to have a mind of their own.…

Read more

Profile: Frances Pinter and Knowledge Unlatched

Frances Pinter is the Founder of Knowledge Unlatched, an Open Access pilot project for ebooks, which includes CUP titles. Frances says that Knowledge Unlatched was an idea born out of frustration with a business model that ‘just skimmed the market and only got important foundational books into a handful of wealthy libraries’.…

Read more

The demand-side of active labour market policies: a regional study of employer engagement in the Work Programme

Jo Ingold and Mark Stuart, Leeds University Business School Post based on an article in Journal of Social Policy   The Work Programme for the long-term unemployed introduced by the Coalition government  in 2011 has attracted much publicity – largely around the number of job outcomes being less than expected and that it is a ‘policy failure’.…

Read more

School meals have an effect on children’s performance in class

The May Nutrition Society Paper of the Month is from British Journal of Nutrition  entitled, ‘The effects of Nordic school meals on concentration and school performance in 8- to 11-year-old children in the OPUS School Meal Study:a cluster-randomised, controlled, cross-over trial’ The cognitive performance of children has been associated with dietary quality in several studies.…

Read more

New method of predicting feed digestibility

The valorization of a feed resource within an animal species depends on its intrinsic physico-chemical characteristics, but also on its actual utilization by the animal to which it is offered. However, the characterization of feeds is often done through their potential value (e.g. digestibility of nutrients) without considering the variability of animal responses.

Read more

Unimagining conservation

The EC Perspectives paper from the March issue of Environmental Conservation is entitled Ecological history of Lachlan Nature Reserve, Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia: a palaeoecological approach to conservation by Rebecca Hamilton and Dan Penny.…

Read more

Dietary survey results from Brazil

Results of the first Brazilian nationwide individual dietary survey reveal low diet quality, especially among high income individuals Similar to many other countries, dietary patterns in Brazil have changed rapidly and drastically in recent decades.…

Read more