Latest news with #UniversityOfOxford
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Good news for gardeners! Scientists have uncovered a simple way to boost plant growth - and all you need is a speaker
Gardeners will try almost anything to help their plants grow. From fancy compost to strict watering times or a regular pruning schedule, there are plenty of ways to give flowers a boost. Some even resort to talking to their plants, convinced they 'respond to vibrations'. But scientists have uncovered a simple way to promote growth – and all you need is a speaker. Experts have found that playing music to plants can make them grow heavier and leafier. However, picking the right playlist is of the utmost importance. A study has found that classical music, such as Bach concertos, boost growth while plants exposed to rock music grow more poorly. 'Playing music to plants is not as crazy as it may sound at first,' Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford and co-author of the paper, told The Times. The team suggest that a combination of sound frequencies, the tempo of the music and the instruments involved may have the power to stimulate or curb plant growth. For the research, scientists analysed pak choi plants – a type of Chinese cabbage – that were played rock music, classical music or no music at all in bursts throughout the day. The classical selection was Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, considered masterful examples of balance between assorted groups of soloists and a small orchestra. Instrumental rock and metal was used for the other musical group. Everything else that could affect plant growth, such as temperature, humidity and lighting, was strictly controlled and kept the same for all plants in the study. After a six-week study period, the researchers found that the plants played classical music ended up significantly larger, with an average dry weight of 8.99g. Meanwhile those played no music weighed 6.33g on average, while plants played rock music weighed only 3.12g on average. The pak choi that had been exposed to classical music also produced the highest number of leaves, with an average of almost 17 each compared with only 10 leaves for the plants that were played rock. Pak choi Also known as Chinese cabbage, pak choi is a leafy green vegetable. It can be used as baby leaves in salads or as larger rosettes in a stir fry. It can be grown in as little as four weeks. The plant is in season all year round but prefers cool, damp conditions. Analysis of the roots also showed that plants exposed to classical music had the highest total root volume, measuring 90 cubic centimetres – three times more than those played instrumental rock, which reached only 30 cubic centimetres. The plants grown in silence, however, recorded total root volume of 77 cubic centimetres. The team was led by plant scientists and music experts at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and University Putra Malaysia. They said there was 'promise' around the use of classical music to help stimulate plant growth. 'Classical music may have an effect on plant growth because plants are attuned to vibrations, such as the vibrations of running water in soil, and they react to them biologically,' Professor Spence added. 'Meanwhile the different frequencies in rock music may fall outside the sonic range which boosts plant growth.' He also said that classical music might 'make gardening a more pleasant experience'. Previous studies have also found that plants tend to grow in the direction of soothing music and away from rock music. The findings were published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. The scientists wrote: 'The results reveal that those plants exposed to classical music exhibited significant differences in shoot characteristics with the highest total fresh weight, shoot fresh weight, and mean leaf numbers. 'Meanwhile, those plants exposed to rock music demonstrated values that were the lowest across all plant parameters. 'Despite the promise around the use of classical music to help stimulate plant growth, further studies are undoubtedly still needed before any firm conclusions regarding the potential benefits of exposing plants to an acoustic stimulus can be drawn.'
The Independent
a day ago
- Health
- The Independent
Vaccine fast-tracked for virus that kills up to 85% of people it infects
A vaccine developed by scientists at the University of Oxford for the deadly Nipah virus may soon be available to patients. The University of Oxford 's vaccine has been granted support from the European Medicines Agency's Prime scheme, which aims to fast track the delivery of treatments to people through closer collaboration with regulators. The World Health Organisation considers Nipah a research priority due to its pandemic potential. The virus is fatal in up to 85% of cases, initially causing symptoms such as fever, headaches, pain, vomiting, and sore throat, but can later lead to fatal brain swelling. Nipah can be transmitted to humans from animals (such as bats or pigs), or contaminated foods and can also be transmitted directly from human to human. The University of Oxford is currently putting its jab for Nipah through phase 1 testing after promising earlier results. It is the first UK academic institution to get access to the Prime scheme from the EMA. Oxford said the additional support offered by Prime "has been granted on the basis of compelling preclinical data and preliminary clinical evidence, and will help to accelerate the development and regulatory approval" of the vaccine. In its letter of confirmation to Oxford investigators, the EMA said: "Nipah virus disease in humans is associated with significant morbidity and a high mortality rate and consequent public health impact. "The increasing frequency of human encounters with fruit bats and spillover into densely populated areas is expanding opportunities for Nipah virus transmission, heightening its outbreak potential." Professor Brian Angus, chief investigator of the Oxford Nipah Vaccine Programme at the Oxford Vaccine Group, said: "This targeted regulatory support for our vaccine programme is a huge boost to the search for a solution to Nipah virus outbreaks. "We are hopeful that the results of these trials will pave the way for us to be able to protect some of the populations most at risk, while also helping the world avoid a future global pandemic." Nipah was first recognised in 1999 during an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia. It was also found in Bangladesh in 2001, and nearly annual outbreaks have occurred in that country since. The disease has also occured in eastern India. Evidence of the virus has been found in bat species in a number of countries, including Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Thailand.
BBC News
3 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Oxford study finds 'extraordinary' tremors caused by tsunamis
A series of "extraordinary" tremors observed across the globe were caused by two tsunamis stranded within a fjord in Greenland, a new study has September and October 2023, the "bizarre" seismic activity was observed every 90 seconds over intermittent periods each University of Oxford-led research confirmed it was caused by two mega tsunamis, which occurred after the warming of a glacier led to two major tsunamis became trapped standing waves that surged back and forth within the remote Dickson fjord in eastern Greenland, causing the tremors, the study found. The research's lead author Thomas Monahan, from the University of Oxford, said: "Climate change is giving rise to new, unseen extremes."These extremes are changing the fastest in remote areas, such as the Arctic, where our ability to measure them using physical sensors is limited." To conduct the study into what researchers called the "extraordinary" tremors , scientists used new techniques to interpret data recorded by satellites orbiting the altimetry data measures the height of the Earth's surface by recording how long it takes for a radar pulse to travel from a satellite to the surface and back altimeters were unable to record evidence of the Greenland tsunamis, but a satellite launched in December 2022 had the equipment capable of doing so - allowing researchers to observe the trapped waves."This study shows how we can leverage the next generation of satellite earth observation technologies to study these processes," Mr Monahan of the study Prof Thomas Adcock added: "This study is an example of how the next generation of satellite data can resolve phenomena that has remained a mystery in the past."We will be able to get new insights into ocean extremes such as tsunamis, storm surges, and freak waves." You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Mysterious 'mega-tsunamis' that shook the entire world for 9 days revealed by satellite
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists have made the first direct observations of a strange seismic event that shook the world for nine consecutive days in 2023 and confirmed its cause: two "mega-tsunamis" that sloshed around an East Greenland fjord. The gigantic waves — one of which measured 650 feet (200 meters) high, or about half the height of the Empire State Building — entered East Greenland's Dickson Fjord and rocked back and forth for nine days in September 2023, sending seismic waves reverberating through the planet's crust. The signal was initially a mystery to scientists, but ground and satellite imagery traced the likely culprit to landslides in the fjord. These landslides unleashed the waves, known as seiches, following the climate-change-induced melting of a glacier behind the fjord. However, no direct evidence of these seiches was found. Now, the theory has been confirmed by a new satellite that tracks water on the surface of the ocean. The findings were published Tuesday (June 3) in the journal Nature Communications. "Climate change is giving rise to new, unseen extremes," study lead author Thomas Monahan, a graduate student in engineering science at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. "These extremes are changing the fastest in remote areas, such as the Arctic, where our ability to measure them using physical sensors is limited. This study shows how we can leverage the next generation of satellite Earth observation technologies to study these processes." Related: 'This is a very big earthquake': The science behind Myanmar's magnitude 7.7 earthquake Typically, scientists study the movements of tsunami waves using a method called satellite altimetry, in which radar pulses are sent to the ocean's surface from orbit to measure a wave's height based on the time it takes for the pulses to return. But because satellites have long gaps in coverage and their instruments can only measure what's beneath them, they are unable to measure the differences in water height in confined areas like those within the fjord. To confirm the existence of the seiches, the scientists turned to data captured by the new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, a joint project of NASA and CNES, France's space agency. Launched in December 2022, the satellite uses an instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) to map 90% of the water across the ocean's surface. KaRIn works by using two antennae mounted across a boom on each side of the satellite to triangulate the return signals of radar pulses with unprecedented accuracy — measuring water levels with a resolution of up to 8.2 feet (2.5 m) along a 30-mile (50 kilometers) arc. RELATED STORIES —Alarming collapse of Greenland ice shelves sparks warning of sea level rise —Greenland lost enough ice in the last 2 decades to cover the United States in 1.5 feet of water —What's the difference between a tsunami and a tidal wave? SWOT data taken above the fjord during the two mega-tsunamis revealed two cross-channel slopes moving in opposite directions between it, confirming their presence. Seismic observations made thousands of miles away, alongside weather and tidal readings, further enabled the researchers to reconstruct the waves and conclusively link them to the mysterious seismic signals. "This study is an example of how the next generation of satellite data can resolve phenomena that has remained a mystery in the past," co-author Thomas Adcock, a professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford, said in the statement. "We will be able to get new insights into ocean extremes such as tsunamis, storm surges, and freak waves," he added. "However, to get the most out of these data we will need to innovate and use both machine learning and our knowledge of ocean physics to interpret our new results."
Gizmodo
7 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Mega-Tsunamis That Shook the World for 9 Days Revealed in New Satellite Images
Scientists have finally solved the mystery behind two strange events that shook the entire planet for nine days straight. Their findings close the book on a years-long effort to trace the seismic signals back to their source. In September 2023, global seismometers detected something strange. The Earth was experiencing minor tremors every 90 seconds—and the shaking went on for nine days. One month later, it happened again. Scientists were baffled, as natural tectonic processes couldn't explain the anomalies. After roughly a year of scientific sleuthing, two studies published in 2024 independently hypothesized that the shaking resulted from two huge landslides, setting off two 'mega-tsunamis' in the Dickson Fjord in East Greenland. These enormous standing waves—or seiches—sloshed back and forth inside the fjord and triggered small movements within the Earth's crust, they posited. It was an intriguing possibility, and both studies presented compelling evidence to support their claims. But, 'there were some big uncertainties that made it difficult to fully corroborate that this was actually the root cause,' Thomas Monahan, a Schmidt AI in Science fellow at the University of Oxford, told Gizmodo. So, Monahan and his colleagues set out to confirm whether this hypothesis was correct. In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, they unveiled the first direct satellite observations of the seiches and definitively linked them to the seismic anomalies. The researchers used data captured by NASA's Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which launched in December 2022 to map the height of water across 90% of Earth's surface. This type of data collection—known as satellite altimetry—works by transmitting radar pulses from a satellite to Earth's surface, and then measuring the time it takes for the signals to bounce off the surface and return to the satellite. Conventional altimeters failed to capture evidence of the seiches due to long gaps between observations, according to an Oxford statement. As such, they generally struggle to gather data in fjord regions due to the complexity of the terrain, Monahan said. But SWOT is equipped with a cutting-edge altimeter instrument that uses two antennas to triangulate the return signals. This allows the satellite to take very high-resolution measurements of surface water levels. 'What we're able to get is essentially an incredibly high-resolution snapshot of what the elevation of the sea surface is doing in these complex regions,' Monahan said. These snapshots provided a more accurate picture of how the fjord's sea surface height changed during the 2023 seismic events, allowing his research team to calculate the slopes of the massive waves that had formed. 'We were able to essentially unearth the fact that there was a significant anomaly in the fjord exactly when we would expect this wave to occur,' Monahan said. But determining that these seiches formed at the same time as the strange seismic signals still wasn't enough to prove the two events were linked. The researchers needed direct evidence to prove that these huge waves were capable of generating global tremors. To that end, they linked the SWOT snapshots to small movements in the Earth's crust detected at seismic stations located thousands of miles away from the fjord. Coupling this continuous seismic data with the intermittent satellite observations allowed them to reconstruct the characteristics of the wave, even for periods that SWOT did not observe. The researchers also ruled out the possibility that the seismicity stemmed from weather or tidal conditions and ultimately determined that the seiches were the sources of the tremors. These waves formed when a warming glacier collapsed in on itself, Monahan said. 'This created very large landslides, which—when they struck the fjord—produced massive mega-tsunamis on the order of 200 meters or 600 feet tall,' he explained. 'This was the first time that a mega-tsunami of that nature had occurred in Eastern Greenland,' Monahan said, adding that this type of event has been documented on the territory's west coast. To see this phenomenon spreading to other parts of the ice sheet 'is concerning,' he said, because it shows that climate change is accelerating in this region. 'I think what this study really emphasizes is that—well, it sounds silly to say—but climate change is a global phenomenon,' Monahan said. 'Some of the biggest and fastest changes are occurring in the Arctic and in remote regions where we may not see it every single day. But it's important to understand and quantify those changes as they will eventually come to impact us where we live,' he said. Indeed, the waves that shook the world offer a stark reminder of the sweeping impacts of rising global temperatures.
