Overlooked element
In the ongoing global discourse surrounding environmental sustainability, the focus has predominantly been on carbon, largely spurred by the Paris Agreement and heightened climate change concerns. Surprisingly, nitrogen, a crucial yet often overlooked element, has not attracted the attention it deserves.
Bridging the skills gap for tech-savvy staff
The manufacturing sector is responsible for producing goods for consumption around the globe. However, the industry is under threat. A November 2023 survey by Eurobarometer discovered that skills shortages are a serious problem for small and medium-sized enterprises across the EU.
Organic chemistry
Read the organic chemistry highlights for February 2024 written by G. Richard Stephenson, University of East Anglia, UK.
Carbon cost of urban farms explored
A large-scale study of urban agriculture has disappointed many of its proponents. The analysis found that the carbon footprint from its food was six times greater than for conventional agriculture (Nature Cities, doi: 10.1038/s44284-023-00023-3). ‘Urban agriculture is generally regarded as a sustainability intervention, but there is not a lot of quantitative evidence to back that up as far as climate change goes,’ says Jason Hawes at the University of Michigan, who led the study. Data was collected through citizen science from 73 sites of low-tech urban agriculture in France, Germany, Poland, the UK, and the US. The embodied greenhouse gases and synthetic nutrient footprints were compared to conventional farm produce sold in each of the five countries.
A breakthrough in staph vaccine research
Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have published a study in Cell Reports Medicine (doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101360), which they say explains why Staphylococcus aureus (SA) vaccines have failed in clinical trials, despite successful preclinical studies in mice.
Microbiome hack could reduce pesticide use
The importance of the microbiome, particularly in the gut of humans, and its role in maintaining overall health is well established. Now an international group of researchers say that they have, for the first time, engineered the microbiome of plants to boost the presence of ‘good’ bacteria that protect the plant from disease.
Could blood reveal cancer before symptoms?
A new study reports how a panel of ten plasma proteins can pick up 18 different early-stage cancers. The findings could kick-start a new generation of screening tests for early detection of the disease. The researchers from Novelna, a California-based company, collected plasma samples from 440 people diagnosed with 18 different types of cancer before treatment, and from 44 healthy blood donors.
Smart lenses to catch glaucoma early
New hope in the fight against malaria has emerged with the publication of promising results from a large-scale clinical trial of a vaccine. The R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed by Oxford University, UK and the Serum Institute of India, demonstrated an impressive 78% efficacy in preventing malaria in young African children over the first year of follow-up. This surpasses the existing RTS,S/AS01 vaccine – the only malaria vaccine currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), which offers 55% efficacy.
Industry urges alignment on carbon price
Industry faces significant challenges from the UK’s decarbonisation schemes, and stakeholders are stressing the need for the government to align its mechanisms as closely as possible with European equivalents to avoid unnecessary trade and fiscal barriers.
Precision on your plate: personalised microgreens
In a significant development for personalised nutrition, researchers in Italy have cultivated microgreens with bespoke nutritional profiles to serve individual dietary requirements. The study, published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture (doi: 10.1002/jsfa.13222), provides a blueprint for the soilless cultivation of nutritionally enriched plants in a commercial greenhouse setting.