A Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science has been awarded to Dr Gergana Daskalova. The fellowship funds Daskalova’s research project “Biodiversity change amidst disappearing human traditions and changing socio-economics”. She joins the Department of Conservation Biology at the University of Göttingen to work together with Professor Johannes Kamp. The five-year fellowship, which is worth over €530,000, will enable Daskalova to investigate the ecological and human fingerprints of land abandonment. Considering the question from both a local and a global perspective, Daskalova’s research will reveal what happens to nature when people leave, and how to make the best of the land left behind.

Virginia Tech researcher Meagan Brem and her collaborators explore alcohol-fueled intimate partner violence in young bisexual+ couples, a group often overlooked in research.

Lehigh University researcher Yu Yang, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a model that can estimate and predict how people move within cities, which could better inform applications ranging from public health policy to transportation and urban planning. The research team includes Lehigh collaborators Lichao Sun, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and Yue Yu, a professor of applied mathematics in Lehigh’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku (Azerbaijan) from November 11 to 22, 2024 will also address the sensitive issue of financing adaptation strategies. Prof. Dr. Lisa Schipper from the Department of Geographical Development Research at the University of Bonn and Dr. Aditi Mukherji from CGIAR, warn in the journal Science against misusing the alleged lack of measurability of climate change adaptation strategies to cut funding. Both scientists were involved in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

A collaborative research team, including Institute of Science Tokyo (formerly Tokyo Institute of Technology), has developed wide-incident-angle radio-wave absorbers for millimeter-wave and terahertz applications. These absorbers demonstrate wideband frequency absorption up to an incident angle of 60 degrees, made possible through the use of frequency selective surface (FSS) patterns. This innovation greatly improves the absorbers' efficiency in advanced communication systems, such as 5G and Beyond 5G networks. Notably, the absorbers also allow low-frequency signals, like Wi-Fi, to pass through, distinguishing them from conventional absorbers. This dual functionality makes them highly versatile and suitable for modern communication systems that demand both high-frequency signal absorption and low-frequency transmission.