COVID-19 Archives

Water in Crisis: Delivering urban and natural water cycle symbiosis

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The Water Research Group helps safeguard drinking water quality.

The Water Research Group in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Sheffield is the UK’s largest urban water research team. Their research encompasses the entire water service provision including assessing the environmental impact and protection of groundwater and rivers, stormwater management and flooding, green and urban water infrastructure engineering, and management of buried assets to […]

Sense about Science: Public led, expert fed

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Policy-makers need to determine goals and rules and discuss their reasoning freely with the public.

Scientific evidence, when used responsibly, has the potential to be a great power for good. However, our lives often revolve around claims based on little, poor or poorly understood evidence. Sense about Science is changing that: they want the public to ask questions and politicians and the media to be held accountable. In this article we find out from director […]

Trans-actional autopoiesis: A relational view of human language

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Language plays an important role in shaping our existence.

Throughout history, and even now, our decisions and worldviews are continually sculpted as we share knowledge with each other by means of language. Dr Mónica Sánchez-Flores at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia argues that the nature of these exchanges is ‘trans-actional’ in the Deweyan sense and rooted in ‘autopoiesis’. Her ideas present important new questions about how we conceive […]

Effective communication in times of risk and crisis: The IDEA model for translating science to the public

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The IDEA model helps craft effective crisis communication messages.

From biosecurity and food security to earthquakes and health pandemics, disaster alerts and warning messages can mean the difference between life and death. The COVID-19 crisis for example can at least in part be ascribed to failed risk communication. At the University of Central Florida, Prof Deanna Sellnow and Prof Timothy Sellnow, experts in strategic communication, are tackling this issue. […]

Researcher: An app to keep scientists on top of science

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The Researcher app keeps scientists informed about latest publications in their field.

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 […]

#SocialScience: Mining Twitter for Social and Behavioural Research

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Twitter is a rich and timely resource for social and behavioural research.

A disaster strikes, somewhere in the world. Within minutes there are millions rushing to their screens, letting out their thoughts and feelings. This makes Twitter, along with other social platforms, a rich and timely resource for social and behavioural research. Surprisingly, however, it is a lot less utilised in the social sciences compared with other fields. Tweeters don’t reflect the […]

A Foundation for the future: How the Medical Research Foundation is looking long-term in its medical research funding

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The Medical Research Foundation is funding research that is beneficial to society long-term - one example is the Antimicrobial Research Training Programme.

The Medical Research Foundation (the Medical Research Council’s charitable foundation) believes that investing in long-term research projects – research that will not just be valuable now but also beneficial later – is the key to effective medical advancement. The Foundation steps in to fund the most promising health research that will make the biggest difference, filling gaps left by institutions […]

Climate change is driving the expansion of zoonotic diseases

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The team researches the spread of zoonotic diseases such as the Zika virus.

Climate change is expanding the range of many infectious diseases. In particular, vector-borne diseases, such as dengue or malaria, are advancing. Predictions of risk for zoonotic diseases need to take into account both biological and abiotic factors. Dr Jeanne M. Fair and her colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA, are pioneering a multidisciplinary approach to the problem. […]

Serious illness decision-making:
How do you plan for uncertainty?

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The long-term health outcomes for COVID-19 patients are still uncertain.

The death toll from the current COVID-19 pandemic rises every day. Symptoms can range from a cough to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Thinking about future medical care is now more relevant than ever before. However, planning for death under conditions of certainty is not the same as planning for a serious illness, where the outcome is more […]