All science stories

Beneath forest floors, a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria connects trees and plants to one another and nourishes the forest. This subterranean network plays a crucial role in limiting the effects of climate change, although much...

Architecture and urban design have traditionally tended to focus on what we see rather than what we hear. When sound is taken into account, it tends to be viewed as a problem to be dealt with through noise control. Reducing noise is certainly...

When medieval scribes sat down to preserve the records of their day, they often wrote on parchment – a paper-like material made from animal skins. A long time valuable source for textual scholars, the parchments have now gone beyond the humanities...

Forests are full of nutritious wild food that can provide rural villagers with a free or affordable source of diet. Paradoxically, current development efforts to increase food security often lead to the destruction of forests in order to make land...

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result adds overwhelming evidence - over length scales comparable with the event horizon - that the object was indeed a black...

Whereas fingerprint analysis is widely used in forensic science, the rest of our hands equally retains a wealth of anatomical information. Bringing together anatomy and biometrics, ERC grantee Sue Black seeks to understand variability in the human...

Culture plays a prime role in creating inclusive and diverse societies. Even so, persons with disabilities are often excluded as they face multiple barriers when taking part in cultural life. How do the cultural rights of people with disabilities...

How is the scope of available nuclear weapon choices decided? ERC grantee Benoît Pelopidas explores the challenges of imagining the possibility of nuclear war and unwanted nuclear explosions, both in international policy and in people’s minds...

Blockchain is seen as a catalyst of innovation in today’s world of digital infrastructure and social media platforms. Its technology promises to give control of data back to the people through its decentralised manner of operation, and the greater...

With a remarkable resource-efficiency and collective intelligence, leafcutter ants have thrived across millions of years of major changes in the Earth’s climate. ERC-grantee Jonathan Shik studies these agricultural systems of ants in a Panamanian...