22 December 2010
A major new fossil site in south-west China has filled in a sizeable gap in our understanding of how life on this planet recovered from the greatest mass extinction of all time, according to a paper co-authored by Professor Mike Benton, in the School of Earth Sciences, and published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The work is led by scientists from the Chengdu Geological Center in China.
9 December 2010
Evidence that the outermost portion of the Earth’s core is stratified is provided by earthquake data reported by scientists at the University of Bristol this week in Nature.
6 December 2010
Ian Manners has been awarded the 2010 Macro Group UK Medal. The Macro Group UK is a joint interest group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Chemical Industry...
6 December 2010
Giant pterosaurs – ancient reptiles that flew over the heads of dinosaurs – were at their best in gentle tropical breezes, soaring over hillsides and coastlines or floating over land and sea on thermally driven air currents, according to new research from the University of Bristol.
6 December 2010
An international team of scientists has come up with a new way to treat carbon dioxide (CO2) so that it can be used in efficient and environmentally friendly methods for extracting oil. The team has developed a soap-like additive for CO2 that turns it into a viable solvent for commercial-scale enhanced oil recovery to increase the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from oil fields. The CO2 soluble additives can also be used to reduce the environmental damage caused by every day industrial processes such as food processing and the manufacture of electronics.
22 November 2010
Like gangsters running a protection racket, drongos in the Kalahari Desert act as lookouts for other birds in order to steal a cut of their food catch. The behaviour, revealed in research funded by BBSRC published in Evolution and reported in Nature's Research Highlights today (18 November), may represent a rare example of two species evolving from a parasitic to a mutualistic relationship.
22 November 2010
Dr Tim Browning from the School of Mathematics and Dr Nicholas Teanby from the School of Earth Sciences have both won Philip Leverhulme Prizes. Our congratulations to them both.
11 November 2010
An interdisciplinary team of students from the Faculties of Science, Engineering, and Medical and Veterinary Sciences has come third in the finals of one of the most prestigious international events in Synthetic Biology, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM - http://2010.igem.org).
2 November 2010
The University of Bristol is one of only seven higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe (and four in the UK) to have been included in the “Excellence Group” for each of the seven subject areas considered by the CHE Excellence Rankings. The results of these rankings, which focus on postgraduate study provision, were most recently published in die Zeit – a weekly German magazine- on 28 October 2010 (and on-line on 27 October 2010).