ResearchPod

Tilapia is one of the most popular seafood dishes, with annual production topping top 6 million tonnes globally. However, fish is a highly perishable food, and large quantities of fish meat is discarded due to loss of quality between capture and final consumption. This raises concerns for both the consumer’s health and finances of seafood producers. 

Dr Maria Lucia Guerra Monteiro at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and colleagues, investigate the effect of a new style of packaging, with or without ultraviolet treatment, on the freshness of tilapia fillets stored under refrigeration, aiming to reduce the food waste from the an early loss of quality. 

 Read their original paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61293-8 

Tackling global challenges in sustainable energy production calls for the rational design of new generations of clean materials, coupling efficiency with low environmental impact. 

Professor Rajan has established a research center at the Department of Materials Design and Innovation, University at Buffalo, New York that explores how to develop ‘quantum signatures’ at a fundamental molecular scale that can guide the rational design of clean materials. 

Read their original article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00798-x 

Read more in Research Outreach 

Toxic pollutants in the air are not a new phenomenon.  But what exactly are the toxic pollutants that can cause severe health issues when present in the air?

Professor Guo-Ping Chang-Chien, director of the Super Micro Mass Research and Technology Center at Cheng Shiu University in Taiwan, studies different emission reduction approaches relating to toxic pollutants. Their teams work has massively improved air quality in Taiwan.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read their original article:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148329

Pain and anxiety are some of the most common and distressing symptoms experienced by patients in all clinical settings.

Research by Dr Elvira Lang and colleagues found that their self-hypnotic relaxation app, Comfort Talk®, is effective in reducing pain and anxiety in patients through short listening times in the waiting room. 

Read their original article: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.RVI.0000185418.82287.72

Read more in Research Outreach

Money plays an essential social role, and its distribution is linked to that of justice. Unfortunately, bias has corroded the mechanisms that govern money creation, resulting in injustices that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. 

Peter Dietsch, a philosophy professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, says it’s time to re-evaluate the system and consider alternatives.

Read their original article: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X21999736

Read more in Research Outreach

Dr Yukiko Washio at RTI International and her colleagues at Temple University and Christiana Care have undertaken intervention research to increase breastfeeding in low-income women in the United States.

Based on this and two pilot studies in the US and UK, they set up a research project using their new BOOST protocol: using financial incentives to increase breastfeeding among women registered on the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programme.

Read the original article:  http://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034510

Read more in Research Features

How society can adapt to climate change is an urgent challenge for the global community. Yet what exactly is that challenge? How can we imagine new ways to respond?

Climate change adaptation has long been defined as society’s response to an external, changing environment. Dr Andrea Nightingale at the University of Oslo, however, argues that the global community should be debating key political questions such as, ‘who ought to govern change’, and ‘what knowledges do we need to understand uncertainty and change?’

Read the original paper: http://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.740

Read more in Research Features

Dr Tanya Evans, Dr Mike Thomas and Dr Sergiy Klymchuk have designed an intervention to examine whether employability prospects for STEM students studying mathematics could be improved.

Read their original paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1818061

Read more in Research Outreach: https://researchoutreach.org/articles/self-efficacy-non-routine-problem-solving-stem-education/

Managing addiction and supporting recovery takes time, training, and legal processes that few can afford alone.

Dr Jennifer Potter, Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Dean for Research at UT Health, San Antonio discusses the 'Be Well Texas’ programme of training and technical assistance, and what she sees as the next steps to remedy the drug addiction problems facing the people, and the social fabric, of America.

Read the original research here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234425

The Earth is a dynamic system. The cold rigid surface (or crust) on which we live is broken into many rigid plates that all move relative to one another in a process known as plate tectonics. 

At the China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, Professor Timothy Kusky is studying the evolution of tectonic plates through Earth history. Along with his colleagues, he has found that a devastating 2020 earthquake in the Aegean Sea resulted from a process known as slab rollback. This process may also have been responsible for the eruption of Santorini 3,650 years ago, which altered global climate, devastated the eastern Mediterranean, and wiped out the Minoan civilisation.

Read the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-86063-y

Read more in Research Outreach : https://researchoutreach.org/articles/african-tectonic-retreat-seismically-shakes-greece-turkey/