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The three main barriers for employers to hire people with disabilities are ideas about their productivity, expectations of high costs involved and a lack of knowledge about what disabilities entail - according to a literature review by Utrecht University. Although there are policies aimed at encouraging employers to employ more people with disabilities, the results remain limited.

Fifty years after scientists predicted a new liquid crystalline phase, it has been observed by Utrecht researchers. The observations were made in model systems of colloidal rods, rod-like particles that are larger than molecules and therefore easier to study. The researchers provide guidance on a way to realize the material with rod-shaped molecules as well.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have a higher chance of suffering from brain-related problems such as anxiety, depression and memory problems. PhD candidate Charlotte Pelgrim discovered that inflammation in the brain and a less protective barrier of the blood vessels in the brain may play a role.

Increasing melt threatens to saturate the firn layer that covers the Greenland ice sheet. Saturation of this layer will dramatically increase global sea level rise, adding about 9 mm a year from the Greenland ice sheet alone (the current sea level rise from all sources is about 4 mm per year). A new study by researchers from Utrecht University, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, and University of Colorado Boulder now shows that this threshold could be reached as early as the first half of the 22 century.

By presenting his research findings at a major international meeting, Joeri Zwerts experienced how he makes societal impact as a scientist. Last month, Zwerts spoke at the general assembly of global forest certification organization the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). At this meeting, he presented his research about the effect of FSC conservation measures on wild mammal populations in Gabon and Congo.

The health and welfare of animals that produce our food is of great importance. Researchers from the University of Utrecht and the Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Nutrition (ILVO) in Flanders, among others, received almost eight million euros from the European Union to develop in cooperation with the industry innovative measuring equipment to monitor the welfare of broiler chickens and fattening pigs as they are loaded, unloaded, transported and slaughtered.

Bacteria living on the walls of a cave in Romania use methane as their only source of food. Researchers from Utrecht University and national and international colleagues describe the previously unknown microbes in a paper in Nature Microbiology . Knowledge about the new species might contribute to the development of new techniques that reduce the concentration of methane in the atmosphere.

Nutrient enrichment via fertilization leads to the loss of plant diversity via increased competition for light between plants, while herbivores protect plant diversity by alleviating competition for light. Utrecht University-researcher Yann Hautier and international colleagues provide the first direct evidence for these mechanisms in natural systems.

An international group of 28 sea-level scientists and practitioners of the World Climate Research Programme's Grand Challenge on Regional Sea Level Change and Coastal Impacts has released a new estimate for high-end sea-level rise. High-end sea-level rise projections represent what might happen rather than representing the most likely outcome.

Mothers who served a prison sentence can help prevent their children from becoming delinquents by taking part in Better Start. This parent intervention aims to prevent that children of these mothers go on to exhibit antisocial behaviour, such as committing offences. Ankie Menting , developmental psychologist at Utrecht University, and Bram Orobio de Castro, Professor of Child and Youth Care Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, have researched the long-term effects of the intervention.

At a slow pace, the Moon is moving away from the Earth and the Earth is rotating more slowly around its axis. To say something about these changes in the distant past, geologists use information stored in rocks and fossils. But the further back in time they look, the more difficult it becomes to retrieve this information.

A previously unknown virus has been found to occur worldwide in the most widely studied plant species, thale cress ( Arabidopsis thaliana ). The presence of the virus, which was discovered by researchers at Utrecht University and Wageningen University & Research, potentially has far-reaching implications for research projects.

PhD candidate uses tools from quantum mechanics to help computers interpret ambiguous language. Words or sentences can often have multiple meanings. This is a concept that is hard to grasp for regular computers. PhD candidate Adriana Duarte Correia used quantum algorithms to make computers understand that a sentence like 'Look at the dog with one eye' can mean two different things at the same time.

An international team of scientists used molecular fossils and machine learning to build the first charts of Antarctic Ocean temperatures over the past 45 million years, offering important insights into the mechanisms driving temperature changes and into the future of the Antarctic ice sheet and sea level changes.

It might seem sustainable to ship second-hand electronics from the EU to Nigeria to be re-used. However, one-third of the TVs, computers and other assorted items that end up in the African country do not function at all, and the rest often do not last long. They become e-waste, which is toxic to human health and the environment.

Historian Lorena De Vita unravels impact of local and global security issues of 1952 In 1952, now 70 years ago, Wassenaar was the scene of a historic breakthrough.

Gamification can lead to lasting behaviour changes. That is the conclusion of a recent PhD study by Jan Dirk Fijnheer at Utrecht University. Households that played his game Powersaver Game saved up to 30 percent more energy than households that used an energy-savings app without game elements. Fijnheer will defend his dissertation on Wednesday, 7 September 2022.

With flags hanging upside down all over the country, trust in politics seems to have reached an all-time low. The nitrogen crisis, along with the housing crisis, problems around asylum housing, the settlement of the benefits affair, the Covid-19 crisis and the Groningen earthquake damage, are all major challenges for the government's reputation.

Until recently, scientists were dependent on information about past plate tectonics when reconstructing past global mean sea level. But now, a team of Dutch, British and American Earth scientists have developed a new method for determining historic global sea level where the influence of land ice is included.

The Netherlands is preparing for La Vuelta Holanda which starts on Friday 19 August. How clean is the air in the places that the peloton is visiting? Researchers from Utrecht University have mapped the annual average air quality of each stage of La Vuelta and demonstrate that the air is most polluted at the start (Utrecht) and finish (Madrid).