Claire Asher

It began with Pong, an early home video game involving two pixelated paddles and a ball that introduced millions to the thrill of gaming. What started as an arcade game in 1972 entered homes during the 1975 Christmas season. Since then, electronic video gaming has blossomed into a graphically stimulating multibillion-dollar-a-year industry, entertaining more than 3 billion gamers globally. But with explosive popularity has come problems. Like other electronics, gaming consoles are linked to a range of environmental threats, from the metals and plastics required to manufacture them, to...

Historical artefacts show that massage has been practised for at least 5,000 years, but people have probably appreciated a nice back or foot rub for much longer than that! Many people find massage an enjoyable experience, but is it also medically beneficial? You might have heard that massage can reduce pain and muscle soreness, relieve muscle knots, flush out toxins, boost the immune system, reduce stress, and prevent depression. Scientists have since confirmed many of these claims, while oth...

You may have heard about some of the animal kingdom’s epic migrations, such as humpback whales travelling from the poles to the equator, or hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies arriving in Mexico every winter. Many birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and insects migrate, and they usually do it to find food, a safe place to breed, or a suitable climate. For example, European swallows migrate south every winter to Africa or Asia where the climate is warmer, and food ...

You may have heard the saying that people are either ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’, meaning that one of the two brain hemispheres is dominant. It is true that different brain regions show specialisation for particular tasks, such as language or visual processing, but there is no evidence that people have one dominant hemisphere or that hemisphere specialisation is linked to personality. The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by a bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum, ...

Plants and animals provide a home within themselves to an invisible community of microbes known as the microbiome. But these natural microbial communities are being degraded and altered by human-caused biodiversity loss, pollution, land-use change and climate change.
On the macro level, habitat loss and diminished environmental microbe diversity, particularly in urban environments, is altering the gut microbiomes of humans and wild animals. Studies have linked microbiome changes to higher ris...

The plastics industry claims that ‘chemical recycling’ or ‘advanced recycling’ technologies, which use heat or solvents to convert waste plastic into chemical feedstocks that can potentially be further processed into new plastics, are a green alternative to mechanical recycling.
But according to a new report, five out of eight U.S. facilities assessed use chemical processes to produce combustible fuel, not new plastics. In addition, facilities are disposing of large amounts of hazardous waste...

Green energy technology growth (especially wind, solar and hydropower, along with electric vehicles) is crucial if the world is to meet Paris climate agreement goals. But these green solutions rely on technology-critical elements (TCEs), whose production and disposal can be environmentally harmful. Mining and processing of TCEs requires huge amounts of energy. Mines use gigantic quantities of fresh water; can drive large-scale land-use change; and pollute air, soil and water — threatening bio...

Green energy technology growth (especially wind, solar and hydropower, along with electric vehicles) is crucial if the world is to meet Paris climate agreement goals. But these green solutions rely on technology-critical elements (TCEs), whose production and disposal can be environmentally harmful.

Researchers asked agroforestry and conventional smallholder farmers in São Paulo state, Brazil for their views on the benefits of agroforestry — a farming technique that combines native vegetation with fruit trees, crops and sometimes livestock — and what they see as the barriers to switching.
Consistent with benefits identified in past ecological studies, agroforestry farmers ranked bird abundance and soil moisture higher than conventional farmers and reported that trees on their farms coole...

Researchers modeled the journey of microplastics released in wastewater treatment plant effluent into rivers of different sizes and flow speeds, focusing on the smallest microplastic fragments — less than 100 microns across, or the width of a single human hair.
The study found that in slow-flowing stream headwaters — often located in remote, biodiverse regions — microplastics accumulated quicker and stayed longer than in faster flowing stretches of river.
Microplastic accumulation in sediment...

As wind energy has grown in popularity, reports of birds killed by wind turbines have become more common. Few studies have investigated the phenomenon, but estimates suggest that between 10,000 and 100,000 birds are killed by turbine blade strikes annually in the UK.
That’s a lot, but it’s worth noting that approximately 55 million birds are killed in the UK each year by domestic cats. Nevertheless, research suggests there may be ways to make wind turbines safer for wildlife. For example, a s...

If you’ve ever tripped and grazed your skin, broken out in a rash, or suffered from acne or eczema, you might have found yourself wondering why human skin is so frail and fragile. Bruises, dry skin, callouses, hives, sunburn and scar tissue are among the many skin ailments that can at best irritate us and at worst seriously harm our health. But these gripes are minor when we consider all the things skin does for us.
Skin is the largest and fastest-growing organ in the body. It provides a wate...

Major changes in crop productivity will be felt globally in the next 10 years according to new computer simulations. Climate impacts on crops could emerge a decade sooner than previously expected in major breadbasket regions in North America, Europe and Asia according to the new forecasts.
Researchers combined five new climate models with 12 crop models, creating the largest, most accurate set of yield simulations to date. Corn could see yield declines of up to 24% by 2100, while wheat may se...