[IELTS Reading] – Back to the future of skyscraper design
Answers to the problem of excessive electricity use by skyscrapers and large public buildings can be found in ingenious but forgotten architectural designs of the 19th and early-20th centuries A The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green building design by Short […]
[IELTS Reading] – The growth of bike-sharing schemes around the world
How Dutch engineer Luud Schimmelpennink helped to devise urban bike-sharing schemes A The original idea for an urban bike-sharing scheme dates back to a summer’s day in Amsterdam in 1965. Provo, the organization that came up with the idea, was a group of Dutch activists who wanted to change society. They believed the scheme, which […]
[IELTS Reading] – Should we try to bring extinct species back to life?
A The passenger pigeon was a legendary species. Flying in vast numbers across North America, with potentially many millions within a single flock, their migration was once one of nature’s great spectacles. Sadly, the passenger pigeon’s existence came to an end on 1 September 1914, when the last living specimen died at Cincinnati Zoo. Geneticist […]
[IELTS Reading] – Could urban engineers learn from dance?
A The way we travel around cities has a major impact on whether they are sustainable. Transportation is estimated to account for 30% of energy consumption in most of the world’s most developed nations, so lowering the need for energy-using vehicles is essential for decreasing the environmental impact of mobility. But as more and more […]
Driverless cars
A The automotive sector is well used to adapting to automation in manufacturing. The implementation of robotic car manufacture from the 1970s onwards led to significant cost savings and improvements in the reliability and flexibility of vehicle mass production. A new challenge to vehicle production is now on the horizon and, again, it comes from […]
Plant ‘thermometer’ triggers springtime growth by measuring night-time heat
A photoreceptor molecule in plant cells has been found to have a second job as a thermometer after dark – allowing plants to read seasonal temperature changes. Scientists say the discovery could help breed crops that are more resilient to the temperatures expected to result from climate change A An international team of scientists led […]
Climate change reveals ancient artefacts in Norway’s glaciers
A Well above the treeline in Norway’s highest mountains, ancient fields of ice are shrinking as Earth’s climate warms. As the ice has vanished, it has been giving up the treasures it has preserved in cold storage for the last 6,000 years – items such as ancient arrows and skis from Viking Age* traders. And […]
Timur Gareyev – blindfold chess champion
A Next month, a chess player named Timur Gareyev will take on nearly 50 opponents at once. But that is not the hard part. While his challengers will play the games as normal, Gareyev himself will be blindfolded. Even by world record standards, it sets a high bar for human performance. The 28-year-old already stands […]
Does education fuel economic growth?
A Over the last decade, a huge database about the lives of southwest German villagers between 1600 and 1900 has been compiled by a team led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Economics. It includes court records, guild ledgers, parish registers, village censuses, tax lists and – the most recent addition – […]
Palm oil
A Palm oil is an edible oil derived from the fruit of the African oil palm tree, and is currently the most consumed vegetable oil in the world. It’s almost certainly in the soap we wash with in the morning, the sandwich we have for lunch, and the biscuits we snack on during the day. […]
A second attempt at domesticating the tomato
A It took at least 3,000 years for humans to learn how to domesticate the wild tomato and cultivate it for food. Now two separate teams in Brazil and China have done it all over again in less than three years. And they have done it better in some ways, as the re-domesticated tomatoes are […]
Stadiums: past, present and future
A Stadiums are among the oldest forms of urban architecture: vast stadiums where the public could watch sporting events were at the centre of western city life as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman Empires, well before the construction of the great medieval cathedrals and the grand 19th- and 20th-century railway stations which […]
[IELTS Reading] – Green roofs
A Rooftops covered with grass, vegetable gardens and lush foliage are now a common sight in many cities around the world. More and more private companies and city authorities are investing in green roofs, drawn to their wide-ranging benefits. Among the benefits are saving on energy costs, mitigating the risk of floods, making habitats for […]
Materials to take us beyond concrete
Concrete is everywhere, but it’s bad for the planet, generating large amounts of carbon dioxide – alternatives are being developed A Concrete is the second most used substance in the global economy, after water – and one of the world’s biggest single sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The chemical process by which cement, the key […]
Conquering Earth’s space junk problem
Satellites, rocket shards and collision debris are creating major traffic risks in orbit around the planet. Researchers are working to reduce these threats A Last year, commercial companies, military and civil departments and amateurs sent more than 400 satellites into orbit, over four times the yearly average in the previous decade. Numbers could rise even […]
Forest management in Pennsylvania, USA
How managing low-quality wood (also known as low-use wood) for bioenergy can encourage sustainable forest management A A tree’s ‘value’ depends on several factors including its species, size, form, condition, quality, function, and accessibility, and depends on the management goals for a given forest. The same tree can be valued very differently by each person […]
Deep-sea mining
Bacteria from the ocean floor can beat superbugs and cancer. But habitats are at risk from the hunger for marine minerals A When Professor Mat Upton found that a microbe from a deep-sea sponge was killing pathogenic bugs in his laboratory, he realised it could be a breakthrough in the light against antibiotic-resistant superbugs, which […]
The global importance of wetlands
A Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil, for all or part of the year. These are complex ecosystems, rich in unique plant and animal life. But according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN), half of the world’s wetlands have […]
The pirates of the ancient Mediterranean
In the first and second millennia BCE, pirates sailed around the Mediterranean, attacking ships and avoiding pursuers A When one mentions pirates, an image springs to most people’s minds of a crew of misfits, daredevils and adventurers in command of a tall sailing ship in the Caribbean Sea. Yet from the first to the third […]
Athletes and stress
A It isn’t easy being a professional athlete. Not only are the physical demands greater than most people could handle, athletes also face intense psychological pressure during competition. This is something that British tennis player Emma Raducanu wrote about on social media following her withdrawal from the 2021 Wimbledon tournament. Though the young player had […]
