UK science has received a boost with the announcement that it is to rejoin Horizon Europe in 2024. However, it seems that there’s no relief for 2023 winners of prestigious European Research Council (ERC) starting grants, which are funded by Horizon, who are based in the UK. They still face the prospect of either giving […]

Analysis of salt samples has revealed that lithium concentrations in seawater have declined sevenfold over the last 150 million years. Previously, researchers had assumed the lithium concentration was constant, but the new findings may help to explain larger geological effects, including links to climate and the carbon cycle. ‘Turning back the clock by 150 million […]

Managers of schools, hospitals, courts, theatres and now universities are urgently reviewing their buildings as the crisis concerning Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) continues. Shortly before the start of the school term, the government advised education settings to vacate all spaces known to contain RAAC, unless they had mitigations in place to make the building […]

Elemental analysis performed on plaster casts of seven victims of the volcanic eruption that buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii has confirmed that asphyxiation was their likely cause of death. The project used portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques to gain insight into the final moments of people who lived in the city when Mount […]

The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced that patent applications for gene-edited and gene-modified organisms will continue to be examined under existing rules, despite EU Commission proposals that are expected to introduce separate regulations to cover the commercial applications of these technologies. The new legislation will create a distinction between crop varieties developed using different […]

The UK is to rejoin the EU’s research programmes Horizon Europe and Copernicus. The move follows an almost three-year hiatus, during which UK-based scientists were unable to lead major research collaborations or receive certain prestigious grants associated with the programmes. However, the UK government has also confirmed that it will not be associating with the […]

Quantum computing has provided new insights into a fundamental aspect of photochemical reactions that has previously proven difficult to study. The findings could improve scientists’ understanding of light-driven processes such as photosynthesis, smog formation and ozone destruction. Photochemical processes occur when atomic nuclei and their electrons take on different configurations after absorbing a photon. Some […]

A world-beating deposit of lithium along the Nevada–Oregon border could meet surging demand for this metal, according to a new analysis. An estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt […]

A draft rule is under review by the Chinese legislature that would penalise current and former university students who earned bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD degrees if they are shown to have used artificial intelligence (AI) tools to ‘manipulate data’ or write their essays, theses or dissertations. These punishments could include revoking their degrees after a […]

The Nobel Foundation has banned Russian and Belarusian envoys, along with those from Iran, from attending the Nobel prize ceremonies, which will take place in Stockholm, Sweden on 10 December. The decision came on 2 September, just two days after the foundation announced that it had reversed course from its decision last year to exclude […]