It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Could bamboo be the next source of renewable energy?
An article in GCB Bioenergy describes why bamboo may be an attractive resource in efforts to develop environmentally friendly renewable energy to replace fossil fuels.
The authors note that bamboo grows rapidly, absorbs carbon dioxide, and releases large amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere. They describe various processes—such as fermentation and pyrolysis—that can be performed to convert its raw material into bioethanol, biogas, and other bioenergy products. A tool with limitations is currently available for selecting the most appropriate bamboo species for different bioenergy production processes.
“We conducted a review of energy conversion methods for bamboo biomass and found that bioethanol and biochar are the primary products obtained,” said first author Zhiwei Liang, of the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Science. “Since the chemical composition of bamboo varies across different species, future research efforts should focus on gathering a more extensive collection of quantitative data for selecting species advantageous for minimizing biomass pre-treatment time and cost.”
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About the Journal GCB Bioenergy: Bioproducts for a Sustainable Bioeconomy is an international journal publishing original research papers, review articles and commentaries that promote understanding of the interface between biological and environmental sciences and the production of fuels and bioproducts directly from plants, algae and waste.
About Wiley Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in scientific research and career-connected education. Founded in 1807, Wiley enables discovery, powers education, and shapes workforces. Through its industry-leading content, digital platforms, and knowledge networks, the company delivers on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
The global burden of disease associated with water insecurity has traditionally focused on diarrheal disease as the most significant driver of infant and child mortality. However, a review in WIREs Water notes that there are many other ways that water insecurity can have adverse health and social consequences for children.
Inadequate or unsafe household water can have a range of health effects in children from infancy to late adolescence. Household water insecurity can spread disease, cause interruptions to growth and development, lead to school absenteeism and interpersonal violence, and contribute to other aspects of children’s mental and physical health.
“Because children's voices are not always included in anti-poverty dialogues, we risk under-appreciating the wide-ranging effects of water poverty on children and missing opportunities to improve their health and well-being,” said corresponding Justin Stoler, PhD, of the University of Miami.
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal The scope of WIREs Water is the interfaces between five very different intellectual themes: the basic science of water, its physics and chemistry, flux, and things that it transfers and transforms; life in water, and the dependence of ecosystems and organisms on water to survive and to thrive; the engineering of water to furnish services and to protect society; the people who live with, experience and manage the water environment; and those interpretations that we, as a society, have brought to water through art, religion, history and which in turn shapes how we come to understand it. These interfaces are not simply designed to be ways of looking at water through what necessarily must be interdisciplinary perspectives. They are also designed to be outward facing in terms of how water can help to understand wider questions concerning our environment and human-environment interactions.
About Wiley Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in scientific research and career-connected education. Founded in 1807, Wiley enables discovery, powers education, and shapes workforces. Through its industry-leading content, digital platforms, and knowledge networks, the company delivers on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
A review in Clinical & Experimental Allergy highlights a problematic relationship between the infant formula industry and allergy health professionals. The authors express concern that this could undermine breastfeeding in countries such as India, whose allergy management practices are often extrapolated from guidance developed in high-income countries with low breastfeeding rates.
The article by international experts in infant nutrition and allergy health documents the high rate of breastfeeding in India, where one-quarter of the world's children are born. It also points to growing evidence that excessive concern about infant allergies in high-income countries is undermining mother-infant bonding, breastfeeding, and child nutrition.
Because data specific to allergic disease prevalence in India are incomplete and allergy specialists represent a new category of health professionals in the country, it will be important for clinicians to avoid conflicts of interest with the infant formula industry. “As the allergy specialty develops in India, local guidance and practice will need to recognize the threat that current allergy practice poses to India's normative infant feeding culture and ensure that breastfeeding continues to be supported at all levels,” the authors wrote.
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal Clinical & Experimental Allergy is the Official Journal of the British Society for Allergy & Clinical Immunology, publishing clinical and experimental observations in disease in all fields of medicine in which allergic hypersensitivity plays a part.Clinical & Experimental Allergy strikes an excellent balance between clinical and scientific articles and carries regular reviews and editorials written by leading authorities in their field.
About Wiley Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in scientific research and career-connected education. Founded in 1807, Wiley enables discovery, powers education, and shapes workforces. Through its industry-leading content, digital platforms, and knowledge networks, the company delivers on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Higher testosterone levels during adolescence are associated with increased involvement of the brain’s anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) in emotion control, but the opposite effect occurs during adulthood. In a study published in Developmental Science, researchers investigated this switch by conducting brain imaging scans in the same individuals during middle adolescence, late adolescence, and young adulthood.
The study, which included 71 participants, demonstrated that the positive effect of testosterone on aPFC engagement decreases from age 14 to age 17 and then shifts by age 20, when higher testosterone levels are linked with less aPFC activity. In contrast to adolescence, during young adulthood, testosterone—no longer related to pubertal development— may impede emotion control, as implemented by the aPFC.
The findings suggest that the function of testosterone changes within individuals across adolescence and adulthood. The study’s investigators note that many mood disorders tend to arise during adolescence, and additional research may reveal whether alterations in the interactions between testosterone and the brain may be related to this.
“Testosterone typically tends to be associated with aggression or dominance behavior, whereas in fact it has multifaceted roles across different developmental periods,” said corresponding author Anna Tyborowska, PhD, of Radboud University, in The Netherlands. “The findings of the current study are important for understanding both typical and atypical maturational trajectories of the brain, as well as considering the impact of external factors (such as stress) on brain function and development.”
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal Developmental Science aims to represent the very best of contemporary scientific developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience, both in the presentation of theory and in reporting new data. Developmental Science includes: comparative and biological perspectives, connectionist and computational perspectives, and developmental disorders.
About Wiley Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in scientific research and career-connected education. Founded in 1807, Wiley enables discovery, powers education, and shapes workforces. Through its industry-leading content, digital platforms, and knowledge networks, the company delivers on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Alcohol-related deaths rose disproportionately quickly in the US among Black, Hispanic, Asian and American-Indian/Alaska Native populations at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, new research shows.
Detailed in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, the peer-reviewed analysis of official data revealed that while the rate of deaths that can be directly attributed to alcohol increased sharply overall, there were stark ethnic and racial disparities.
“Racial and ethnic minority groups experienced disproportionately higher rates of unemployment, fear of Covid and financial strain during the pandemic,” says lead author Dr Hyunjung Lee, who carried out the research whilst at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston.
“We also know that American Indian and Alaska Native populations, Black Americans and Hispanics have historically experienced higher alcohol-induced mortality rates and so we thought it was important to examine how the pandemic might have affected these rates.”
The biggest increase witnessed by Dr Lee and co-author Dr Gopal Singh, from The Center for Global Health and Health Policy, Global Health and Education Projects, Inc., Riverdale, Maryland, was in American Indian and Alaska Native populations, where the proportion of deaths that could be directly attributed to alcohol more than doubled between February 2020 and January 2021.
This was followed by 58% increase in the rate of alcohol-related deaths in Black Americans, a rise of 56% in Hispanic Americans and a 44% increase in Asian Americans. The non-Hispanic White population experienced a 39% rise. This is surprising because another study found that alcohol consumption rates similarly increased among racial/ethnic groups during the pandemic– yet the death rates differed.
In the first study of its kind, Dr Lee, who is now with the Cancer Disparity Research Team, Surveillance & Health Equity Science Department, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, and Dr Singh used death records and census data to calculate alcohol-induced death rates in adults aged 25-plus in each month from January 2018 to December 2021.
They looked at how the rate changed overall, as well as by age, sex, race and ethnicity.
There were 178,201 deaths with alcohol as the underlying cause during this 4-year time period. Liver cirrhosis accounted for almost half of these deaths; alcohol-related mental health problems and accidental poisoning by alcohol were the second and third most common causes of death.
Among those aged 25 and over, alcohol-related deaths overall rose by 25.7% between 2019, when there were 38,868 deaths and 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when there were 48,872 deaths.
Data from 2020 shows that the increase in alcohol-related deaths was far from uniform, with marked disparities by sex and age, as well as race by and ethnicity.
The death rate rose more quickly in females, although males still accounted for the bulk of deaths.
Similarly, alcohol-related deaths climbed more sharply among younger people, with a 78% rise among 35 to 44-year-olds and 68% rise in the alcohol-induced death rate in 25 to 34-year-olds.
It is possible that these age groups felt the effects of school closures and job losses more keenly than older people who were more financially secure and had fewer childcare responsibilities.
The study’s authors describe the disproportionate increase in deaths among Black, Hispanic, Asian and American-Indian/Alaska Native (AIANs) populations as being particularly concerning.
The authors speculate: “The psychological and financial strains of the pandemic, combined with the deprioritizing of alcohol use disorder treatment during Covid-19, might have exacerbated existing disparities in sociodemographic characteristics and access to care. This could have accelerated alcohol-related deaths, creating the stark disparities in increases in death rates revealed by our analysis.”
Existing disparities from other research include higher rates of severe anxiety, stress or depression in AIANs. They also have the highest disability, unemployment and poverty rates in the US. Hispanic Americans, meanwhile, are less likely to use specialist alcohol treatment than other groups.
Dr Lee and Dr Singh conclude by calling for policies to improve access to treatment for alcohol disorders. They would also like to see educational programs on the health harms of alcohol to be designed for, and targeted at, groups with sociocultural and linguistic barriers.
The study’s limitations include using provisional death data for 2021. Although the latest information available at the time, it may have been lower than the final figures. In addition, misclassification of AIANs, Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans on death certificates could have led to the disparities in alcohol-related deaths being underestimated.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- New species continue to evolve the world over, as different groups of organisms separate and take divergent paths. What happens when you add climate change to the mix?
That’s the question Thomas H.Q. Powell, assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and his lab seek to answer in “Contrasting effects of warming in diverging insects,” recently published in Ecology Letters.
In the 1850s, the apple maggot fly — a major agricultural pest — began to diverge into two populations in the Hudson Valley. One continued to live on the fruit of the region’s native hawthorn trees. The other shifted to a new food source: apple trees, originally introduced to North America by English colonists.
“The entomologist who discovered this actually corresponded with Darwin about it potentially being an example of the origin of species in real time. It wasn’t until the system was picked back up by researchers in the late 20th century that we found out he was right,” Powell said.
Hawthorns fruit three or four weeks later than apples, resulting in a shift in the two populations’ reproductive schedules. That, in turn, has an impact on several species of parasitic wasp that feed on the maggot fly, demonstrating the delicate balance that undergirds ecosystems.
For their experiment, the researchers reared populations of apple- and hawthorn-based flies and parasitic wasps under conditions matching the seasonal average from the last 10 years of climate data, and then warmer conditions projected 50 to 100 years into the future. The results have important ramifications for insect biodiversity, Powell points out.
Although in the same location, the two fly populations responded to that temperature shift in starkly different ways. The hawthorn-dwellers appeared to have more resilience, possibly owing to more genetic diversity. The lifecycle of the apple flies was thrown out-of-phase with their host plant, making their survival tenuous — potentially halting the speciation process.
However, the life cycles of parasitic wasps weren’t affected by the heat — which could spell dire consequences if they fall out of step with their prey’s lifecycle.
Natural adaptation might be able to restore some balance in disrupted systems long-term, but there are major constraints on rapid evolution. Habitats tend to be smaller and fragmented, for example, limiting the amount of genetic variability that organisms need to respond to evolving pressures.
“It’s not just that climate change is disrupting evolution through the potential breakdown of this classic speciation story, but that the rapid evolution of the flies has a strong bearing on how susceptible they are to climate change,” Powell said. “So, if we’re finding that the effects of these future conditions may be completely different, even for identical flies from the same habitat that have been evolving since just the 1800s, we may see widespread chaos in the ecological timing of insect communities in the coming decades.”
JOURNAL
Ecology Letters
ARTICLE TITLE
Simulated climate warming causes asymmetric responses in insect life-history timing potentially disrupting a classic ecological speciation system
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Jun-2023
PFAS found in blood of dogs, horses living near Fayetteville, NC
In a new study, researchers from North Carolina State University detected elevated PFAS levels in the blood of pet dogs and horses from Gray’s Creek, N.C. – including dogs that only drank bottled water. The work establishes horses as an important sentinel species and is a step toward investigating connections between PFAS exposure and liver and kidney function in dogs and horses.
The study included 31 dogs and 32 horses from the community, and was conducted at the behest of community members concerned about their pets’ well-being. All of the households in the study were on well water, and all of the wells had been tested and deemed PFAS contaminated by state inspectors.
The animals received a general veterinary health check and had their blood serum screened for 33 different PFAS chemicals. These PFAS were chosen based on compounds that were present in the Cape Fear River basin and the availability of analytical standards.
From the targeted list of 33 PFAS of interest, researchers found 20 different PFAS in the animals. All of the animals in the study had at least one chemical detected in their blood serum, and over 50% of the dogs and horses had at least 12 of the 20 detected PFAS.
PFOS, a long-chain PFAS used for years in industrial and commercial products, had the highest concentrations in dog serum. The perfluorosulfonic acid PFHxS, a surfactant used in consumer products and firefighting foams, was detected in dogs, but not horses. Consistent with wells being the known contamination source, some ether-containing PFAS including HFPO-DA (colloquially known as GenX), were detected only in dogs and horses that drank well water.
In dogs who drank well water, median concentrations of two of the PFAS – PFOS and PFHxS –were similar to those of children in the Wilmington GenX exposure study, suggesting that pet dogs may serve as an important indicator of household PFAS. Dogs who drank bottled water, on the other hand, had different types of PFAS in their blood serum. However, 16 out of the 20 PFAS detected in this study were found in the dogs who drank bottled water.
Overall, horses had lower concentrations of PFAS than dogs, though the horses did show higher concentrations of Nafion byproduct 2 (NBP2), a byproduct of fluorochemical manufacturing. The finding suggests that contamination of the outdoor environment, potentially from deposition of the PFAS onto forage, contributed to their exposure.
“Horses have not previously been used to monitor PFAS exposure,” says Kylie Rock, postdoctoral researcher at NC State and first author of the work. “But they may provide critical information about routes of exposure from the outdoor environment when they reside in close proximity to known contamination sources.”
Finally, the veterinary blood chemistry panels for the animals showed changes in diagnostic biomarkers used to assess liver and kidney dysfunction, two organ systems that are primary targets of PFAS toxicity in humans.
“While the exposures that we found were generally low, we did see differences in concentration and composition for animals that live indoors versus outside,” says Scott Belcher, associate professor of biology at NC State and corresponding author of the work.
“The fact that some of the concentrations in dogs are similar to those in children reinforces the fact that dogs are important in-home sentinels for these contaminants,” Belcher says. “And the fact that PFAS is still present in animals that don’t drink well water points to other sources of contamination within homes, such as household dust or food.”
The work appears in Environmental Science and Technology and was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory.
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Note to editors: An abstract follows.
“Domestic Dogs and Horses as Sentinels of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance (PFAS) Exposure and Associated Health Biomarkers in Gray’s Creek North Carolina”
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c01146
Authors: Kylie D. Rock, Madison E. Polera, Hannah M. Starnes, Scott M Belcher, North Carolina State University; Theresa C. Guillette, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Research Participation Program; Kentley Dean, Southern Oaks Animal Hospital; Mike Watters, Debra Stevens-Stewart, Gray’s Creek Residents United Against PFAS in Our Wells and Rivers Published: June 21 in Environmental Science and Technology
Abstract: Central North Carolina (NC) is highly contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in part due to local fluorochemical production. Little is known about the exposure profiles and long-term health impacts for humans and animals that live in nearby communities. In this study, serum PFAS concentrations were determined using liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry and diagnostic clinical chemistry endpoints were assessed for 31 dogs and 32 horses that reside in Gray’s Creek NC at households with documented PFAS contamination in their drinking water. PFAS were detected in every sample, with 12 of the 20 PFAS detected in ≥50% of samples from each species. Average total PFAS concentrations in horses were lower compared to dogs who had higher concentrations of PFOS (dogs 2.9 ng/ml; horses 1.8 ng/ml), PFHxS (dogs 1.43 ng/ml, horses <LOD), and PFOA (dogs 0.37 ng/ml; horses 0.10 ng/ml). Regression analysis highlighted alkaline phosphatase, glucose, and globulin proteins in dogs and gamma glutamyl transferase in horses as potential biomarkers associated with PFAS exposure. Overall, the results of this study support the utility of companion animal and livestock species as sentinels of PFAS exposure differences inside and outside of the home. As in humans, renal and hepatic health in domestic animals may be sensitive to long-term PFAS exposures.
Domestic Dogs and Horses as Sentinels of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance (PFAS) Exposure and Associated Health Biomarkers in Gray’s Creek North Carolina
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Jun-2023
COI STATEMENT
The following authors disclose their associations that could be perceived as potential competing interests with the subject matter discussed in this manuscript: Dr. Kentley Dean is an employee of Southern Oaks Animal Hospital a full-service veterinary medical facility, located in Hope Mills, NC. Mike Watters and Debra Stevens-Stewart are residents of the study area and served as community representatives for this community engage participatory research study. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.
£1.29 million funding boost for solar scientists
Scientists from Northumbria University’s world-leading Solar and Space Physics research group have been awarded more than £1 million to carry out research which will further our understanding of the Sun, and its impact on Earth
IMAGE: FROM L-R: PROFESSOR JAMES MCLAUGHLIN, PROFESSOR CLARE WATT, DR NATASHA JEFFREY, AND PROFESSOR JONATHAN RAEview more
CREDIT: SIMON VEIT-WILSON/NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY
Scientists from Northumbria University’s world-leading Solar and Space Physics research group have been awarded more than £1 million to carry out research which will further our understanding of the Sun, and its impact on Earth.
Researchers have received a £1.29 million grant from the UK government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council(STFC) to fund four research projects, each exploring a different element of the Sun’s activity and the Sun-Earth connection.
They include the movement of particles from solar flares, the speed and movement of solar winds, the processes that heat the Sun’s outer atmosphere to millions of degrees Celsius, and the dynamics of the radiation belts surrounding Earth.
Professor James McLaughlin heads up Northumbria University’s Solar and Space Physics research group and is lead investigator for one of the STFC-funded projects – The fundamental physics of time-dependent magnetic reconnection with a specific interest in the applicability to Quasi-Periodic Pulsations.
His research will focus on the process known as magnetic reconnection – when magnetic lines within the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, the solar corona, become twisted, break apart, then reconnect.
This results in a sudden release of electromagnetic energy in the form of a solar flare and a coronal mass ejection – an explosive acceleration of plasma away from the Sun towards Earth.
The project aims to develop our understanding of reconnection, including quasi-periodic pulsations – time variations in the energy released during a flare, which are not understood but which could tell scientists much about the properties of the flare.
Professor McLaughlin and colleagues will use high performance computing to run numerical simulations – using existing data gathered from past solar flares to better understand the process taking place.
Speaking about his research, Professor McLaughlin said: “When magnetic lines become twisted, they can store energy like an elastic band. If the lines break and reconnect that energy is released. This is a very common occurrence in the solar corona and also happens in the atmospheres of other magnetically-active stars.
“When reconnection occurs that stored energy is transformed into other forms of energy – this could be a solar flare or coronal mass ejection, which in turn results in space weather which we experience on earth in the form of solar radiation or geomagnetic storms.
“One of the focuses of our research group is predicting space weather. To do that we need to understand its origins and discovering more about what triggers solar flares will allow us to do that.”
Space weather from the Sun can pose a significant risk to the technologies we rely on in daily life and those designing such infrastructures need to take space weather into account when designing robust systems.
These risks are recorded in the UK government’s national risk register with severe space weather recognised as a significant risk. The long term findings of these new Northumbria University projects will help the UK increase its preparedness and resilience to possible severe space weather events in the future.
Another of the projects funded through the STFC grant will explore the way in which high energy particles, such as electrons, are distributed when released from a solar flare.
Led by Dr Natasha Jeffrey, the Determining Solar Flare Hard X-ray Directivity using Stereoscopic Observations with Solar Orbiter/STIX project aims to reveal more about the conditions that produce high energy particles in solar flares.
Up until now it has not been possible to routinely measure the angular distribution of energetic electrons accelerated in a solar flare.
However, because electrons release X-rays as they travel, scientists are now able to use data from the Spectrometer Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX), situated on board the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter satellite, to determine this information using stereoscopic observations. This is where the flare is viewed from two different observer viewpoints, using STIX and other X-ray spacecraft situated at Earth.
And with the Sun currently entering its solar maximum – the period of greatest solar activity during the star’s 11-year solar cycle – there will be a higher number of flares to observe, making this the optimum time for such research.
Speaking about the project, Dr Jeffrey said: “This project will advance our understanding of solar flare particle acceleration and transport by investigating the angular distribution, or directivity, of flare-accelerated electrons.
“Up until now the directivity of the particles has been a missing diagnostic in our understanding of the acceleration environment of solar flares, but thanks to the data we can now obtain from STIX and by comparing that data with state-of-the-art electron and X-ray computer simulations, we can constrain the conditions producing energetic particles in flares.”
A further two projects have also received funding through the STFC grant. Professor Jonathan Rae will lead the Using machine learning to determine and understand the underlying states of radiation belt electrons project.
Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, this research aims to identify and understand the underlying states of radiation belt electrons, and how and why those states evolve in time and space.
Professor Clare Watt leads the fourth project – Understanding generation of whistler-mode waves in the magnetosphere.
Whistler-mode waves are one of the most intense electromagnetic waves in the planetary magnetospheres and are responsible for energetic electron losses into the atmosphere.
Professor Watt’s research will also investigate a new paradigm for whistler-mode growth using machine learning applied to drifting electron energy flux.
Between them, the four projects will allow scientists not only to discover more about the physics of the Sun, the Sun-Earth connection, Earth’s magnetosphere and radiation belts, but how stars behave more generally.
The Sun is made of ionised gas, known as plasma, which is threaded by a strong magnetic field. With magnetised plasmas common throughout the Universe, the research will also advance scientific understanding across multiple research communities.
Speaking about the significance of the STFC grant, Professor James McLaughlin said: “We are delighted to be working with STFC on these transformative, ground-breaking research projects. The Solar and Space Physics research group demonstrates international leadership across theory, numerical modelling, observations of solar and space plasma, data intensive science, and space-related hardware, and this funding award supports those strengths.
“We are particularly excited about our research contributing to the prediction of Space Weather, as well as training people in high performance computing and in machine learning.
“Machine Learning is a particular strength of the Group, and synergises with our STFC-funded NUdata Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science.”
The UK Space sector is growing rapidly, with the North East in particular experiencing a surge in investment in space technology and skills. Northumbria is capitalising on this with UK Government investment in its new Northumbria Space Technology Laboratory.
Prospective students can find out more about this exciting research area on Northumbria University’s Physics with Astrophysics BSc (Hons) degree course, which includes learning about space weather, artificial intelligence and the latest astrophysics research.
