Espresso Knowledge

The Arctic Animal Movement Archive is helping scientists better understand how animals are responding to a changing Arctic. The archive documents animal movement in a region that faces warmer winters, earlier springs, shrinking ice and increased human development. Scientists often study animal movement and behaviour to understand the impact of environmental changes. The archive has researchers from over 100 universities, government agencies and conservation groups across 17 countries...

A new study shows how a cybercrime market operates, and offers ways to disrupt it. For the past two years, researchers collected data on illegal trades taking place in an underground cybercrime forum. Transactions involved malware, currencies, sexual content, and hacking tutorials and tools. Estimated trades exceed 6 million dollars...

Tree rings can reliably track mercury pollution in the atmosphere. Researchers studied a Yukon gold mining town that operated from 1905 to 1966. If you mercury to river gravel, it binds to gold, separating it from sediment. Heat the deposit. Mercury separates and you get gold. During heating, some mercury diffuses into the atmosphere, and trees absorb it. By examining cores taken from trees growing in the area, researchers got yearly accounts of atmospheric mercury levels...

What did they find?

Kid influencers with popular YouTube channels frequently promote junk food and poor nutrition in their videos.

Researchers studied 2019's five most popular youtube kid influencers.

Ages ranged from 3 to 14 years.

Nearly half of the videos promoted food and drinks.

More than 90 percent featured junk food, candy and soda.

These videos were viewed more than a billion times.

What does this mean for parents and health agencies?

A cylinder of soil drilled from Kenya's Koora Basin tells Africa's environmental record of the past million years.

Researchers examined its chemistry and fossil, and combined it with archeological artifacts from Olorgesailie, Kenya.

They show how environmental changes drove technological and cultural innovations in humans.

The study highlights our ability to adapt amidst uncertainty...

Researchers are using soil bacteria to develop a safe, sustainable way to purify water and make it drinkable.

Soil Microbial Fuel Cells or SMFCs capture and use energy from metabolic reactions in soil bacteria.

They are buried in soil and are connected to a reactor that purifies water.

Researchers successfully tested SMFCs in remote Icapui, a village in Brazil.

Why is this work important?

When we recognize a chair or a dog, our brain is separating them into individual properties, comparing those to information we have already learnt and then putting everything back together. Researchers have discovered that it takes 49 properties to recognize almost any object...

We are better at processing information that those born a century ago. But like them, our cognitive capacity still begins to stagnate around the age of 35. What could this mean for productivity and labour markets?

One of the most important features of how we communicate is not unique to us. It likely existed in primates millions of years before human language evolved...

By actively nurturing care and connection, school food programs improve children’s access to healthy food and nurture security and well-being. This is at the heart of a study where researchers documented lunchtime in British Columbia's schools as they went from in-house food to external caterers...