YOUR WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE
- Daily meat consumption in the UK has fallen by 17% in the last decade. That reduction though is not happening quickly enough to meet a key national target, according to scientists. The aim is to reduce the environmental impact of our diets. This goal, placed by the National Food Strategy, is based on a review of the whole UK food system – from farming and production to hunger and sustainability. It recommends meat consumption in the UK fall by 30% over the next 10 years.
- Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants. Having a vaccine – after more than a century of trying – is among medicine’s greatest achievements. The vaccine – called RTS,S – was proven effective six years ago. Now, after the success of pilot immunisation programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, the World Health Organization says the vaccine should be rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high malaria transmission.
- German-born Benjamin List and Scotland-born David MacMillan were announced as the winners at an event in Stockholm. Their chemical toolkit has been used for discovering new drugs and making molecules that can capture light in solar cells. The winners will share the prize money of 10 million krona (£842,611). The scientific process in question, called asymmetric organocatalysis, has made it much easier to produce asymmetric molecules – chemicals that exist in two versions, where one is a mirror image of the other.
- A stink bug that can spoil crops and infest homes has been trapped in Surrey as part of a monitoring study. The brown marmorated stink bug is native to Asia, but has spread to parts of Europe and the US, where it can destroy fruit crops. A lone stink bug was caught at RHS Garden Wisley this summer within weeks of the setting up of a pheromone trap. The adult may be a stowaway brought in on imported goods or part of an undiscovered local population.
- It has an average of about half its biodiversity left, far below the global average of 75%, a study has found. A figure of 90% is considered the “safe limit” to prevent the world from tipping into an “ecological meltdown”, according to researchers. The assessment was released ahead of a key UN biodiversity conference. Biodiversity is the variety of all living things on Earth and how they fit together in the web of life, bringing oxygen, water, food and countless other benefits.
- The technology entails firing a bolt of plasma at slurry to break up toxic ammonia and climate-heating methane. The lightning is plasma – a stream of matter heated so that electrons are ripped away from the atoms and molecules break down. The action breaks ammonia molecules to produce pure nitrogen, which is absorbed into farm slurry. That saves the farmer money as nitrogen applied to fields in slurry is an essential fertiliser. A plasma gun has been firing at cow dung on the dairy Holly Green Farm, in a picturesque part of Buckinghamshire.
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