Billions of barrels of oil. Commuters in smog masks. Heavy metals leaching into the soil… Boats, planes and cars can have a bad reputation for environmental impact. Yet, when it comes to protecting the planet, the sustainable use of transport has a vital role to play.
Plastic pollution is reaching crisis level. Of the 1 million plastic bottles sold every minute across the globe, only 14% are recycled. The vast amount of unrecycled plastic that ends up in our oceans contaminates marine ecosystems and harms ocean life.
A huge part of the problem is the strong plastic used in drinks bottles: polyethylene terephthalate (PET). It currently takes hundreds of years for PET to break down naturally in the environment.
When emergency services arrive at a crime scene, one of the main jobs for the officers present is to preserve the forensic evidence. Without it, vital clues about the cause of the incident and the people responsible could be lost.
But it's not the only important scene to consider – the fragile memory of the witness must be preserved too.
Home at last after a hard day’s work, all you want to do is put your feet up with a nice cup of tea. But as you head for the kettle, something feels wrong.
The house feels different, somehow. It doesn’t look quite right. And then it hits you: Somebody has been here. There’s been a break-in. I’ve been robbed.
As you pace from room to room, checking off a mental list of what’s missing and what remains, you feel shocked, angry and sad.
Modern supply chains bring exotic foods and local produce to our shelves all year round. In that climate, traceability has become one of the biggest problems for the food and drink industry today.
51 per cent of the UK population is female, but only 32 per cent of our MPs are women. 43 per cent of NHS chief execs are women, but 77 per cent of its employees are female. Professor Karen Johnston’s research demonstrates that the lack of diversity in organisations makes for poor performance and lack of trust. And it’s not enough just to legislate for change.
LIFE SOLVED lifts the lid on the latest ideas and discoveries that look set to change our lives. Every week we'll bring you a fresh episode featuring cutting-edge research. Find out how this is set to revolutionise the way our world works. We'll explain how technology and community go hand in hand with the natural world, and how industry and sustainable environments can connect for the benefit of society.
Real research. Real world change.
Dr James Dennis is a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication and Journalism at the University. During England’s summer of unrest in 2011 – when thousands rioted on the streets – James was doing his PhD.
"I was the first in my family to go to university. I come from one of the areas of lowest social mobility in the UK," he says.
Each day, more than 1,000 lives are lost by drowning – but that number doesn’t include unrecorded drownings in low and middle-income countries. The real figure could be as high as 1.2 million deaths per year, with 25% of those deaths being children.
We’re living through a time of amazing technological change. So amazing, in fact, that it’s been called a revolution – the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or 4IR, to be exact. It’s a revolution that is already changing everything from the way we work, the way we create and consume entertainment, to our concepts of privacy, medical practice, functional technologies for the disabled, grocery buying and perhaps, most importantly, the ways we teach and learn.