science wire

More outdoor learning is 'essential' for young people in Scotland, whose opportunities to go outside fall far short of what is offered in other countries, says a new study.

The UK could lose some of its existing renewable energy capacity in two years' time when financial support for wind farms and other renewables starts to run out, unless key changes are made to how the energy market is managed, finds new analysis by UCL researchers.

In a real-world lab in Jurapark Aargau, researchers and the local community are testing out ideas for a sustainable future.

Construction still relies on concrete and steel - at a high cost to the climate. But interest is shifting back to natural and reusable materials.

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School meals, provided for free by governments around the world, could be used to curb global hunger and promote a sustainable global food system, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

Posted on: 15 September 2025 A global study reframes ditches as multifunctional waterways with the potential to improve community resilience, water quality, biodiversity and environmental outcomes.

Hillwalkers setting out to bag a Munro are being asked for their help to bag a meteorite too, as scientists race against time to recover precious samples of a space rock which lit up the skies over Scotland this summer.

in the Amazon region and in Southeast Asia, reduced rainfall, deforestation and fires are already leading to a deterioration in forest quality and changes in ecosystems," says Alexandra Nora Müllner-Riehl from the Institute of Biology at Leipzig University.

Decentralised urban drainage systems on private and public lands could absorb half a million cubic metres of water in Graz alone.

An EPFL study measured the carbon footprint of 20'000 residential buildings in Vaud Canton. The authors' findings show that a targeted approach will be key to lowering the emissions associated with residential real estate.

A tough winter has taken its toll on Canberra's bird population, with less than half of the superb fairy-wrens that live in the Australian National Botanic Gardens surviving, researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) have found.

Children growing up in British cities face barriers to safe, playable spaces as financial constraints, policy misalignment and housing pressures cause planners to prioritise property over parks, finds a new study by researchers at UCL and Bradford Institute for Health Research.

Climate change was responsible for 1,700 heat-related deaths in the Swiss canton of Zurich between 1969 and 2018, according to new research from the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

Researchers at TU Delft and National University of Singapore have brought batteries to a next level by designing devices based on water which can be applied as practical, sustainable, and scalable high-rate energy storage solutions.

Scientists at The University of Manchester are calling for the creation of a global network of air monitoring stations to track the movement of airborne plastic pollution, which may be travelling further and faster around the planet than previously thought. In a new review, published in the journal Current Pollution Reports today, the researchers have examined the current scientific research on how tiny plastic fragments - called micro and nanoplastics - enter the air, where they come from, and the mechanisms that transport them across vast distances.

Five researchers from UCL have been appointed to leading roles in the United Nation's next major climate assessment report, drawing on their expertise in climate science, governance, finance, and policy.

Scientists from our top-rated Biosciences Department and partner institutions have created the first ever complete map of a hidden system that helps plants survive when the world around them changes. The research focuses on a process called SUMOylation (a way that cells fine-tune how proteins work).

In construction, wood is often hailed as a sustainable alternative to concrete. However, there is a gap in the structural analysis of timber frame buildings: Walls with window openings are not taken into account for horizontal bracing because of a lack of data on their load-bearing behavior. A project by Empa, Bern University of Applied Sciences, and ETH Zurich, in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FoeN) and industry, aims to change this - using mathematical models and large-scale experiments.

Groundwater, which provides 80 percent of Switzerland's drinking water, is the focus of the Eawag Info Day taking place today in Dübendorf. Michael Berg from Eawag's Water Resources & Drinking Water Department and scientific manager of this year's Info Day explains why this important resource is under pressure and how it can be protected.

An engineer and a plant scientist are working together to ensure yams and taro are capable of surviving droughts in Tonga and keeping people fed.

When the Soviet Union's collapse means no glacier data for decades in Tajikistan Too little snowfall is now also shaking the foundations of some of the world's most resilient 'water towers', a new study led by the Pellicciotti group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) shows. After establishing a monitoring network on a new benchmark glacier in central Tajikistan, the international team of researchers was able to model the entire catchment's behavior from 1999 to 2023.

The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter mission has split the flood of energetic particles flung out into space from the Sun into two groups, tracing each back to a different kind of outburst from our star.