Latest News

Can African smallholders farm themselves out of poverty?

A great deal of research on agriculture in Africa is organised around the premise that intensification can take smallholder farmers out of poverty. The emphasis in programming often focuses on technologies that increase farm productivity and management practices that go along with them.

Yet the returns of such technologies are not often evaluated within a whole-farm context. And – critically – the returns for smallholders with very little available land have not received sufficient attention.

This article by David Harris, School of Natural Sciences; Jordan Chamberlin, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and Kai Mausch, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Publication date: 11 December 2019

Behind Eyes Wide Shut

A symposium, the only one of its kind to be held in the UK, will explore the legacy of Eyes Wide Shut, film director, Stan;ey Kubrick's final film. 

The event is a collaboration between the UAL Archives and Special Collections Centre and Bangor University. 

Publication date: 10 December 2019

Why some scientists want to rewrite the history of how we learned to walk

It’s not often that a fossil truly rewrites human evolution, but the recent discovery of an ancient extinct ape has some scientists very excited. According to its discoverers, Danuvius guggenmosi combines some human-like features with others that look like those of living chimpanzees. They suggest that it would have had an entirely distinct way of moving that combined upright walking with swinging from branches. And they claim that this probably makes it similar to the last shared ancestor of humans and chimps.

This article by Vivien Shaw of the School of Medical Sciences and Isabelle Catherine Winder, of the School of Natural Sciences, is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Publication date: 5 December 2019

Did human hunting activities alone drive great auks’ extinction?

eLife news release

New insight on the extinction history of a flightless seabird that vanished from the shores of the North Atlantic during the 19th century has been published today in eLife.

The findings suggest that intense hunting by humans could have caused the rapid extinction of the great auk, showing how even species that exist in large and widespread populations can be vulnerable to exploitation

Publication date: 26 November 2019

Scientists complete largest global assessment of ocean warming impacts

A group of international marine scientists has compiled the most comprehensive assessment of how ocean warming is affecting the mix of species in our oceans – and explained how some marine species manage to keep their cool.

Researchers from the UK, Japan, Australia, USA, Germany, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand analysed three million records of thousands of species from 200 ecological communities across the globe.

Publication date: 26 November 2019

Pico power protects oldest Welsh Bible

A 431-year-old Welsh Bible is staying warm this winter, following the installation of a small pico hydro turbine by the National Trust at Tŷ Mawr Wybrnant in Snowdonia, which will help manage humidity levels in the 16th-century farmhouse.

Through collaboration with Bangor University and Trinity College, Dublin, the renewable energy scheme is helping the charity protect one of the nation’s most culturally important manuscripts more sustainably, with the Bible dating back to 1588 and one of only 24 known original copies left, it’s housed at the birthplace of its translator, Bishop William Morgan.

Publication date: 22 November 2019

One hand and two hemispheres: How both sides of the brain get involved post-amputation

Psychologists have shown, for the first time, how our brains’ plasticity and ability to adapt, extends across both sides of the brain.

We have known for a while that if one body part or function is lost, then an adjacent part of the brain, which controls a different function, can extend into and ‘take over’ the part of the brain responsible for the missing function.

Now functional MRI scans have shown how, in people who have lost one hand, the functions controlling the surviving hand extend across both brain hemispheres.

Publication date: 21 November 2019

Underwater Gliders help improve weather forecasts

New measurements of how waters mix just below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean are to be used to improve weather forecasts. 

The water turbulence was measured by an underwater ‘glider’ and the results of the research, led by Bangor University researcher Natasha Lucas, are published in a new Journal paper.

Publication date: 18 November 2019