Science & Environment
SCTODAY
Environment News 2021
April 02, 2021
Mapping policy for how the EU can reduce its impact on...
EU imports of products contribute significantly to deforestation in other parts of the world. In a new study, published in One Earth, researchers from several universities worldwide, among...
March 25, 2021
Are bats responsible for the coronavirus? It’s not...
Since the beginning of the pandemic, bats have been blamed for transmitting the SARS-Cov-2 virus to humans. There is no scientific proof that this is true. Meanwhile, the...
January 19, 2021
Soil: a major resource for storing carbon
© Wikimedia Commons : Hélène Rival, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Agricultural land in the plain of Forez, Les Massards, Loire.
The CO2 absorbed by plants ends up in...
Environment News 2020
January 19, 2021
Soil: a major resource for storing carbon
© Wikimedia Commons : Hélène Rival, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Agricultural land in the plain of Forez, Les Massards, Loire.
The CO2 absorbed by plants ends up in...
December 01, 2020
Science and environment
Brazilian beef accounts for 20% of global deforestation
More transparency concerning the origin and ecological footprint of food is the key to building more sustainable supply chains. UCLouvain researchers took a closer look at Brazilian beef,...
December 08, 2020
Science and environment
Where colonisation accelerated erosion tenfold
Photo taken at the Bio Bio region (Chile), V. Vanacker, March 2013
Over the last century, human activities in North America have resulted in sediment movement equivalent to 3,000 years...
October 30, 2020
Thinking about the post-oil era in specific terms!
How, specifically, do we achieve the energy transition? UCLouvain researchers are coordinating a major research project aimed at answering this crucial question by 2024, in order...
September 22, 2020
Environment
Eco-responsibility: child’s play
Today’s children are tomorrow’s adults and decision-makers. And in this world in transition, they can shake things up from an early age, for example, by protecting our planet. How?...
July 16, 2020
Environment
Radioactive fallout contamination in Europe
A high-resolution spatial map reveals the distribution of soil contamination in Europe by Caesium 137 from nuclear tests and the Chernobyl accident. It’s a radio-element harmful to health but...
August 04, 2020
Environment
Where’s the water on Venus?
The presence of water on planets composed mainly of rocks and metals, such as Earth, Mars or even Venus, dates back to the earliest stages of their formation. This is shown by...
July 24, 2020
Environment
Trade: tomorrow’s sustainable sectors?
How can we make global trade more sustainable? By measuring the stability and intensity of the relationships between actors in raw material supply chains and production areas. Patrick...
July 16, 2020
Environment
Under Taal volcano’s ash
Volcanic ash and agriculture don’t mix. In early January, the Philippines’s Taal volcano, one of the world’s most dangerous, suddenly erupted, causing significant damage to crops and brutally...
June 25, 2020
Satellite view of COVID-19 impact reveals struggling...
What’s the connection between white asparagus, soft fruit, plastic tarps, and trucks? Each had a role in recent satellite image analysis that shows a major indirect impact of COVID-19....
May 14, 2020
Environment
One ice-free summer by 2050
The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean was once an explorer’s dream. Eventually, big icebreakers made their way through the ice. Soon it could become a routine...
April 23, 2020
Environment & Technology
Decarbonising our planet with ammonia
Green energy, yes, but on the condition that we can use it when we need it! Current research in the field is all about green energy storage and delivery. At UCLouvain, Francesco Contino is...
April 16, 2020
Technologie
‘All-organic’ batteries for sustainable mass storage
Conventional batteries aren’t a sustainable solution for our planet. Prof. Alexandru Vlad is currently working on an alternative for storing energy: all-organic batteries.
Today’s...
March 24, 2020
Mars, from the inside
The mission’s name sums up its goal: InSight Mars should lead to a better understanding of the planet’s internal structure. Since November 2018, data flows have been analysed by scientists,...
March 05, 2020
Environment
Hydrogen: fill it up with renewable energy
How can we store excess renewable electricity? ‘Via chemistry!’ answers the team of Prof. Joris Proost. Beginning in April, thanks to funding from the European Horizon 2020 programme, Louvain...
February 19, 2020
Boosting chemical reactions with a hybrid catalyst
Damien Debecker and his team have developed a hybrid catalyst that produces chemical cascade reactions of unprecedented efficiency. It’s a very useful invention for improving chemical...
Environment News 2019
October 23, 2019
The complex market for green energy
Prof. Anthony Papavasiliou, a specialist in energy algorithms, just received an ERC Starting Grant. His research project, ICEBERG, aims to find ways to integrate the individual consumer into...
September 19, 2019
Environment
Biodiversity: an emergency
We’ll talk a lot about biodiversity this fall at UCLouvain but from an angle that is not often assumed: focusing on the interactions – we wouldn’t dare write ‘synergies’ – between causes of...
September 17, 2019
Mission: satellite data training for ESA
This week, from 16 to 20 September in Louvain-la-Neuve, nearly 100 carefully selected researchers participate in the ‘Advanced Training in Land Remote Sensing’, a training in the exploitation...
June 20, 2019
Hydrogen's H-hour
The International Energy Agency (IEA) presented a first report on hydrogen at released at the G20 Ministerial Meeting on Energy Transitions and Global Environment for Sustainable Growth, held...
June 20, 2019
Environment
Greener hydrogen
Hydrogen could play a key role in decarbonising the chemical industry and storing green electricity. But there is still some way to go to improve sector capacities and lower production costs....
June 13, 2019
Environment
Fighting technological obsolescence
For many, the term ‘obsolescence’ has become synonymous with the industrial conspiracy to make consumer goods unsustainable. But in addition to planned obsolescence, technological obsolescence...
May 29, 2019
Environment
Revolutionising batteries with polymers
For eight years, Prof. Jean-François Gohy, a researcher at UCLouvain's Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences, has studied the use of polymers in batteries. Today, thanks to his work,...
May 23, 2019
Environment
Permafrost minerals predict our planet’s future
It was just a year ago that Sophie Opfergelt and her UCLouvain Earth and Life Institute team were taking permafrost samples in Alaska. Today, she is already drawing conclusions from...
June 06, 2019
Synthetic fuels. The future of energy
The energy transition, in concrete terms: that’s what Prof. Hervé Jeanmart and his team have been studying at UCLouvain for three years. In 2015, with a consortium of five universities, they...
May 16, 2019
Environment
What will become of our insects and flowers?
The climate changes we are experiencing today are already impacting the natural world around us. The average temperature is increasing, temperature and rainfall extremes are increasing,...
April 18, 2019
Environment
When soils filter wastewater
In Wallonia, one-tenth of domestic waste water doesn’t pass through a waste water treatment plant. Is it pollution? Not necessarily, because soils can filter and purify wastewater naturally...
May 09, 2019
Environment
Ultra-thin cells on steel
Solar panels have invaded the roofs of our homes. And they’ll stay there a long time even though new, more sustainable photovoltaic cells are being developed.
Electronic circuits, too, have...
April 11, 2019
Environment
Energy transition is rooted in the local
As part of the 11-14 March Water and Climate Festival in Louvain-la-Neuve, Science Today is highlighting UCLouvain ecological transition research and researchers. Julie Hermesse, doctor in...
April 04, 2019
Environment
Solar energy for a circular economy
The SUNRISE project, in which UCLouvain participates, just received €1 million from the European Union. With this sum, for one year, the consortium will establish a road map and...
May 02, 2019
Environment
Rethinking the energy system
As part of the 11-14 March Water and Climate Festival in Louvain-la-Neuve, Science Today is highlighting UCLouvain ecological transition research and researchers. Gauthier Limpens, a PhD...
April 25, 2019
Environment
Drug traces in water
Traces of drugs are in water worldwide. While the impact of such pollution on the environment and human health is still largely unknown, researchers of the Louvain4Water at UCLouvain are...
March 28, 2019
Environment
Controlling nitrate
Agricultural nitrate has polluted water for decades. Today various techniques make it possible to more effectively control the use of this necessary fertiliser. It’s a much more complex...
March 21, 2019
Environment
Energy transition: what economic impact?
How to continue economic growth in a context of energy transition? Prof. Hervé Jeanmart1 and PhD student Elise Dupont2 try to answer this question by studying the return on renewable...
March 13, 2019
Environment
Oils against insects
At a time when scientists are raising the alarm over the accelerated disappearance of insects, it may seem astonishing to exhibit the results of research aimed at destroying them. But fighting...
March 14, 2019
Environment
Fresh from Antarctica, first impressions
A team of ULB and UCLouvain researchers just returned from a nearly two-month mission in Antarctica. They studied the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet by analysing snow accumulation....
March 12, 2019
Environment
Using satellite data to track changes in earth’s surface
A team from the Earth and Life Institute has generated a database describing land-use change so thematically detailed that it is now used by institutions such as the OECD and the United...
March 13, 2019
Society
Young people, critical thinking, and the forest
In 2018, the Académie d'Agriculture de France awarded Julie Matagne a silver medal for her thesis on forest literacy. What do young people understand about media coverage of forests? ...
January 29, 2019
Technology
Detecting dark matter: seven hints point to primordial...
For several decades, astrophysicists have suspected the existence of so-called dark matter, constituting the bulk of all matter in the universe, but have not detected it directly....
Environment news
November 29, 2018
Disperse to survive
Dispersion is an essential biological process for the survival of individuals and species. A UCLouvain research team led by Nicolas Schtickzelle, professor of ecology and biodiversity at the Earth...
September 05, 2018
Technology
The Planck legacy
Simulation performed by Christophe Ringeval, representing cosmic strings, which are possible traces of the unification of forces in the primordial universe. The Planck mission found no such...
August 29, 2018
François Massonnet
Climate prediction is his forte . At 32 years old, François Massonnet has just been appointed FNRS research associate. While he has been working on the subject for years, he looks forward to...
August 22, 2018
Environment
Forest evolution under the magnifying glass
The research was ambitious: inventory the distribution of mushrooms on a European scale. Recently published in the journal Nature, it could not have been completed without the help...
August 21, 2018
Environment
An urgent warning
Will the earth’s climate reach a tipping point beyond which the planet will become a ‘hothouse’? It’s a possibility scientists warn of in an article that’s urgent reading.
‘The article, in...
August 09, 2018
Environment
Tracking soybeans
The Trase platform, on which Patrick Meyfroidt and his team of researchers collaborate, is unique: it aims to retrace the channels of the main agricultural products responsible for...
August 20, 2018
Environment
A tool for modernising European agricultural policy
Commissioned by the European Commission (EC) and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Sen4CAP research project, led by Sophie Bontemps and Nicolas Bellemans and supervised by Pierre...
May 29, 2018
Society
Evolution: Cooperation for progress...and knowledge
‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, says René Rezsohazy, professor of molecular biology at the University of Louvain, citing Theodosius Dobzhansky. But...
March 27, 2018
Technology
Searching for objects lost in space
A team of researchers at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM) has just completed a project on behalf of the European Space...
July 12, 2018
Environnement
Standardising pack ice measurements to better predict...
At UCL’s Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research (TECLIM), two researchers are passionate about polar region climate variations: François Massonnet and Hugues Goosse....
July 12, 2018
Environment
Alaska: Are surprises in store as permafrost thaws?
Permafrost refers to soil that has a temperature below 0° C for more than two consecutive years. With global warming, the thaw of permafrost is waking up its constituents. Their...
June 22, 2018
Technology
The Higgs boson finds a mate
The simultaneous production of a Higgs boson and a top/antitop quark pair has just been observed for the first time. For physicists, observing this affinity is an important advance...
May 07, 2018
Environment
Connected objects that last
In 2017, 403.5 million smartphones were sold worldwide. We usually choose one on the basis of technical characteristics, such as camera or operating system quality; we then hope it lasts long...
March 22, 2018
Environment
What killed the saiga antelopes?
In 2015, in Kazakhstan, nearly 200,000 saiga antelopes died in less than a month. A multidisciplinary and international team of researchers investigated this mysterious hecatomb.
The saiga...
November 24, 2017
Technology
Turning wood into gas
On 24 November, Xylowatt will begin operating a gas generator at CHU UCL Namur. Fuelled by biomass, it will supply the hospital with heat and electricity. This is a direct consequence of 20 years...
October 16, 2017
Society
Food: a public commons?
World hunger continues to increase, affecting 777 million people in 2015 and 815 million in 2016. Would it help if we changed the way we look at food in our societies? That’s the idea of José Luis...
September 26, 2017
Environment
Pay to prevent deforestation
To objectively evaluate an anti-deforestation programme, an international team of researchers carried out a randomised study in Uganda, the first of its kind in environmental science. The...
August 17, 2017
A better understanding of Antarctic pack ice variation
While the Arctic pack ice has continued to melt, the Antarctic pack ice tended rather to expand between 1979 and 2015, before its extent was also drastically reduced in 2016 and 2017. A surprising...
July 25, 2017
Jérôme Mallefet’s abyssal fishing
To draw up an inventory of the abyssal fauna; this was the ambitious objective of the Australian international mission in which Jérôme Mallefet participated. Over a month of intensive work in...
July 25, 2017
Perfume emission from flowers
Flowers emit a sweet perfume that attracts not only pollinating insects, but human beings, who use them to create perfumes widely used in cosmetics. But how do these flowers emit them into the...
June 27, 2017
Alain Holeyman, 2017 Coulomb Conference guest speaker
This year, the Comité Français de Mécanique des Sols et de Géotechnique (‘French Committee for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnics’) has invited Alain Holeyman to speak at the Coulomb Conference. The...
January 17, 2017
Global warming: Next stop, the Arctic
Pushing fundamental research toward its applications—that’s the challenge of the European Horizon 2020 APPLICATE project. Its goal is to more accurately predict the effect on Europe of Arctic...
November 10, 2016
Student mission to Mars
‘Mars to earth, come in, Earth.’ UCL students can pronounce these words every April when they take off for the red planet—so to speak—via Mars Society’s Mission to Mars project.
Space...
March 22, 2017
A better understanding of deglaciation
The work of two Earth and Life Institute researchers has led to a better understanding of glaciation and deglaciation. We now know how variations in earth’s orbit influence the passage from a...
January 24, 2017
Disasters: robots to the rescue
Imagine an earthquake or nuclear accident disaster area where it’s impossible to send in rescuers without putting their lives at risk. At UCL, Nicolas Van der Noot is looking to robots to do the...
April 11, 2017
The carbon cycle reveals its secrets
Today, thanks to the work of Kristof Van Oost’s team at the UCL Earth and Life Institute, we have a better understanding of the carbon cycle. Specifically, they have discovered a process that...
January 15, 2017
Tree transpiration
Thanks in part to the contribution of UCL researchers, the amount of water that returns to the atmosphere from a given tract of forest can now be measured. This is a major advance for the field of...
November 10, 2016
Learning how to grow symbiotic fungi
UCL’s Mycology Laboratory is a world leader in the in vitro breeding of a certain fungus of great value to agriculture and research. Each year, Prof. Stéphane Declerck’s team shares its knowledge...