Articles Archives

Behavioural Sciences

Taking care in business: Making jobs work for older employees

The workforce is ‘greying’, but this is no grey sky for business. Older employees bring loyalty and experience, prized assets for the modern company. However, age comes with needs and limitations that may conflict with the duties of work. Shattering misconceptions on this matter is Dr Silvia Dello Russo, Associate Professor at Toulouse Business School. Her research reveals that the […]

Health & Medicine

A measure to predict critical errors in open emergency surgery

Medical errors are a leading cause of worldwide deaths. Surgeons are sometimes required to carry out procedures that they do not perform frequently, which leads to surgical errors that can have severe consequences for patients. To confront this issue, Professor Colin Mackenzie, Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, developed with his team, the Trauma Readiness Index […]

Thought Leaders

Researcher: An app to keep scientists on top of science

Olly Cooper, CEO and co-founder of the Researcher app, thinks he and his team have found a solution for scientists who need to be confident that they have heard about all the latest research and publications in their field, but don’t have the time to check every publication channel themselves. Researcher makes keeping up to speed quick and easy, and […]

Physical Sciences

Sustainable construction for a circular economy

Prof Dr-Ing Danièle Waldmann and Dr Gelen Gael Chewe Ngapeya from the Institute of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Luxembourg are developing sustainable solutions for the construction industry in the form of modular building components that can be reused, reconditioned and recycled. Rather than standardising buildings, the research team have developed standardised building components including new masonry […]

Arts & Humanities

Traversing the minefield: A professional humanitarian for a new world of risk

The inhumanity of war has always put the humanitarian in peril. But today aid workers stand in the crosshairs of armed adversaries with new tactics and targets for their violence, while competition between aid agencies creates even more insecurity on the ground. So, who should the humanitarian be? An altruistic do-gooder governed by feelings of empathy? Or a professional who […]

Arts & Humanities

Gender stereotypes and the recruitment process in Spain

The majority of university degrees are earned by women, yet men far outnumber women in senior workplace roles, and according to the World Economic Forum, it will be at least 100 years before women’s career prospects equal those of men. Research by M. José González, Clara Cortina and Jorge Rodríguez from Pompeu Fabra University in Spain throws important light on […]

Behavioural Sciences

Social dilemmas reveal selective inattention in indirect reciprocity

Cooperation with others generates prosperity within human society, yet research into the evolution of cooperation, particularly indirect reciprocity, has left much unexplained. Indirect reciprocity involves assessment rules and draws on moral judgment. Most studies assume that people will consider all the information available to them before deciding whether to cooperate. Dr Isamu Okada, Associate Professor at Soka University, Japan, has […]

Behavioural Sciences

The purpose of emotion: An overlooked self-regulatory sense

We are all familiar with the term ‘emotions’ and experience a myriad of good and bad feelings every day. But what do we really understand about their biological origin or purpose? In a thorough analysis and integration of existing theory and literature, Katherine Peil-Kauffman redefines emotion as a sense, a complex elaboration of the first simple sensory system to have […]

Engineering & Technology

Choice‑making and choose‑ables: Making decision agents more choosy

Dr Lorraine Dodd, from Cranfield University, examines the Artificial Intelligence approach to modelling a decision agent’s choice-making. She explores the factors affecting an adaptive agent’s freedom of decision-making and investigates factors that can shape, extend, limit or re-focus an agent’s potential in terms of their ways forward. Dr Dodd also discusses the higher-order concept of choice-making that she refers to […]

Health & Medicine

Scalp microbiome gets to the root of dandruff

Dandruff is an extremely common cosmetic condition, but one that remains often difficult to treat. Research scientists Sally Grimshaw, Elaine Xu and Dr Barry Murphy, of Unilever R&D, have carried out a detailed genetic investigation of the scalp microbiome: the community of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that live on the scalp skin. Their findings suggest that both bacteria and […]