Economics

Sheffield, UK — A new study from the University of Sheffield has calculated the long term economic impact of Covid-19 on city centres, and found that as the shift towards working from home moves businesses to suburban areas, city centres stand to lose £3 billion in 2022. Dr. Jesse Matheson, from the University of Sheffield’s […]

Singapore — From climate change to the ongoing pandemic and beyond, the issues facing today’s world are increasingly complex and dynamic. Yet solving problems like these – which interweave social, environmental, physical, and political factors – requires new approaches that extend beyond traditional ways of thinking. It requires people to draw upon and integrate seemingly […]

Cambridge, MA — With much of the U.S. in shutdown mode to limit the spread of the COVID-19 disease, a debate has sprung up about when the country might “reopen” commerce, to limit economic fallout from the pandemic. But as a new study co-authored by an MIT economist shows, taking care of public health first […]

Exeter, UK — Pathogenic fungi pose a huge and growing threat to global food security.  Currently, we protect our crops against fungal disease by spraying them with anti-fungal chemistries, also known as fungicides.  However, the growing threat of microbial resistance against these chemistries requires continuous development of new fungicides.  A consortium of researchers from the […]

Burlington, VT — The U.S. economy may be expanding, but it’s taking the low road to growth that undermines wellbeing and may cause economic challenges in the future, according a new study published online in the Cambridge Journal of Economics that centres on the way different countries have responded to the growth of women in […]

Ikoma, Japan — The rise in popularity of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has the potential to change how we view money. At the same time, governments and societies are worried that the anonymity of these cashless transactions could allow criminal activities to flourish. Another less remarked issue is the energy demands needed to mint new […]

Ann Arbor, MI — They work in a bubble of 80-hour work weeks, and 24-hour shifts. They’re caring for patients for the first time, while still learning the ropes of the medical profession. The constant stress wears on their mental health. But for first-year doctors who started their careers in the past few years, a […]

Córdoba, Spain — Their great taste and their health benefits have made them one of the most popular fruits. The world market for strawberries, rich in antioxidants and vitamin C, was greater than 9 millon tons in 2016. According to the latest report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Spain is the top […]

Ithaca, NY — Consumers were more willing to buy unlabelled produce after being shown food tagged as “genetically modified” in a new Cornell University study that comes two months before a new federal law, requiring genetically modified organism disclosure labels on food products, goes into effect. “We wanted to learn from consumers what will happen […]

London, UK — A group of researchers may have found a way to reverse falling crop yields caused by increasingly salty farmlands throughout the world. Led by Brent Nielsen, professor of microbiology and molecular biology at Brigham Young University, scientists have used bacteria found in the roots of salt-tolerant plants to successfully inoculate alfalfa plants […]

Bloomington, IN — A small team of researchers at Indiana University has created the first global map of labour flow in collaboration with the world’s largest professional social network, LinkedIn. The work is reported in the journal Nature Communications. The study’s lead authors are Jaehyuk Park and Ian Wood, Ph.D. students working with Yong Yeol “Y.Y.” Ahn, […]

Munich, Germany — Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology have developed a new methodology for the simultaneous analysis of odourants and tastants. It could simplify and accelerate the quality control of food in the future. Whether a food tastes good or not is essentially determined by […]