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Prof Molly Byrne: ‘People need three things to make any behaviour change – capability, opportunity and motivation’

Encouraging health behaviours to tackle the pandemic

Claire O'Connell

Research Lives: Prof Molly Byrne, director of the Health Behaviour Change Research Group NUIG School of Psychology

Where’s the beef? Outdated data leads to uncertainty on way forward

Dr David Styles’s modelling of different possibilities sees Irish beef’s ranking rise as high as third or fall as low as 11th. Equally, Irish dairy can rise to first or fall to 11th.

Sophie Kevany

At beef and dairy farm level there is a growing emphasis on practicalities over conflicting research on carbon efficiency

Elon Musk rocket launch postponed due to bad weather

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft attached sits on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 27th in Cape Canaveral, Florida ahead of its planned launch. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty

Ronan McGreevy

Craft was to be the first private enterprise vehicle in history to take humans into space

Got a moment? Help research into life under Covid-19 restrictions

The Irish Hedgehog Survey is looking for information on these shy creatures. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons.

Claire O'Connell

From attitudes to eating habits, online surveys are looking for information during lockdown

More than 1,500 scientists issue funding warning and call for department for higher education and research

Prof Luke O’Neill is among the signatories of the letter urging political parties to make the establishment of the new department a priority in the government formation talks. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Kevin O'Sullivan and Carl O'Brien

Open letter to TDs says research sector will ‘buckle’ if left to face current financial challenge on own

Tony McGrath (76) cocooning at his home in Drumcondra, Dublin. Photograph: Fran Veale

Blanket cocooning for over-70s has done more harm than good

William Reville

Telling healthy older people to lock themselves away has been counterproductive

Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg in 1471 and produced art of outstanding quality

Sketches and spirals: When maths and art collide

Peter Lynch

Albrecht Dürer, born in 1471, believed ‘the new art must be based upon science’

Monarch butterflies make Herculean migratory trips each autumn, travelling more than 3,500km from eastern Canada and the northeastern US to Mexico.

New evidence emerges on decline of monarch butterflies

William Reville

Dramatic fall in monarch numbers has been widely blamed on Roundup weedkiller

Peter Casey’s Theorem greatly generalised Ptolemy’s Theorem. Figure: Dr Maurice O’Reilly, DCU

In tribute to John Casey, founder of modern geometry

Peter Lynch

Limerick academic extended Greek astronomer Ptolemy’s theorem and wrote six widely used textbooks

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, ie can transfer to people from animals. It is thought SARS-COV-2 that causes Covid-19 originated in bats. Photograph: Getty Images

Viruses hijack living host cells, and then replicate themselves

William Reville

William Reville: Antibiotics do not work against coronavirus because they are designed to fight bacteria

Since the population is finite, and the vast majority of people recover, the graph of the number of infected people is bell-shaped, growing to a maximum and then declining

Coronavirus: What does exponential growth mean?

Peter Lynch

Disease grew exponentially in its initial stages but that cannot continue indefinitely

Riot Games’s most popular video game, League of Legends

The mathematics of fair play in video games

Peter Lynch

A rating system originally developed for chess is used to match evenly-skilled players

Air traffic controllers have a very high cognitive ability called situational awareness. File photograph: Alan Betson

William Reville: There are no shortcuts to high achievement

William Reville

You can only become a critical thinker in areas where you have deep knowledge

A National Health Service ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’ sign on TV screens in the entrance in London. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA Wire

Coronavirus: Modelling the evolution of a viral outbreak

Peter Lynch

Mathematical models were useful in responding to Sars, Ebola and swine flu and will help with the Covid-19 virus too

The body must work to maintain the multitasking brain we developed over long evolutionary time and if the brain is not actively exercised on an ongoing basis its capacity tends to decline. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Aerobic exercise – the route to lifelong brain sharpness

William Reville

Continuous, lifelong exercise is the antidote to gradual decline in cognitive capacity

In his study of hanging, Haughton considered an account in the Odyssey in which Homer described how 12 faithless handmaids of Penelope were hanged.

The Irishman who brought the humane drop to hanging

Peter Lynch

Samuel Haughton discovered a method in which the neck is broken by the drop

Fire and Rescue personal run to move their truck as a bushfire burns next to a major road and homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin on December 19th, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: David Gray/Getty Images

Australian bush fires were not caused by climate change alone

William Reville

Reducing the fuel load is one immediate step we can take to tackle wild fires

Benford’s law can reveal highly unlikely frequencies of numbers in a dataset. It has been used to detect fraud in elections and tampering with digital images. Photograph: iStock

How many numbers begin with a 1? More than 30 per cent!

Peter Lynch

Physicist Frank Benford’s remarkable discovery has proven valuable in fraud detection

The requirement to limit noise was one of the factors leading to the development of high-bypass turbofan engines to replace older turbojets.

Using maths to reduce aircraft noise

Peter Lynch

Aero acoustics and aircraft design are intensely mathematical in character

Albert Einstein. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Dead white men: What have they ever done for us?

William Reville

William Reville: We have good reason to be proud of our European heritage

Our Milky Way galaxy is at least 10 billion years old and 1000,000 light years across, contains up to 300 billion stars and more than 10 billion planets with temperate, possibly life-friendly surface conditions. Photograph: Babek Tafreshi/SSPL/Getty Images

Are we alone in the Milky Way galaxy?

William Reville

One possible reason Earth has not been visited by aliens is that we’re a lonely planet with few other inhabitable neighbours in our galaxy

Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, studying mould cultures at his laboratory in London. Photograph: Peter Purdy/BIPs/Getty Images

Serendipity has played a prominent part in many scientific discoveries

William Reville

Fortunate unplanned discoveries include penicillin, Viagra, x-rays, radioactivity and microwave ovens

A French stamp issued to commemorate the work of Sophie Germain

The ‘extraordinary talent and superior genius’ of Sophie Germain

Peter Lynch

Germain became first woman to win Grand Prize in Mathematics of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1816

The double helix; the distinguishing chanaracteristic of DNA.

How our bodies pack a metre of DNA into a tiny cell

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: Knot theory helps biochemists understand how enzymes interact with DNA

William Harvey demonstrating the circulation of the blood. Photograph: Getty

How William Harvey taught the world how the heart works

William Reville

Englishman defied popular wisdom with his research of blood circulation system

Traditional burial remains the choice for dealing with the majority of deaths (almost 80 per cent) in Ireland. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Pushing up the daisies . . . literally

William Reville

A new, greener, option for disposing of human remains is to turn the corpse into a compost suitable for fertilising garden soil

Cake cutting may sound limited, but it is important for many practical problems. Photograph: iStock/Getty Images

What is the fairest way to cut your Christmas cake?

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: Scientists continue to try to crack the code of ‘envy-free’ cutting

By the horns: mathematician Bruce Boghosian of Tufts University and others have developed a mathematical model that accurately reproduces real-life wealth inequalities in a wide range of free-market countries

The free market is a rigged casino

William Reville

So much for notion that redistribution of wealth is soft-hearted generosity pandering to the lazy

The Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, the largest underground laboratory in the world devoted to neutrino and astroparticle physics. Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images

Particle physics gives maths potentially powerful new tool

Peter Lynch

Mathematical analysis of how neutrinos interact with matter prompts discovery

Jazz hands: what is actually needed instead is the fostering of psychological resilience. Photograph: iStock

Why ‘jazz hands’ is not the way to combat anxiety

William Reville

Young people must learn to be resilient rather than avoid stressful situations

Increasing security threats have led to higher needs for detection and for increased efficiencies at airport baggage checks

The algorithms that go into your luggage screening at airports

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: Baggage scanners use X-ray tomography similar to CT scans

A processed food is a natural food that has been treated to enhance a particular quality, eg smoking meat to add flavour and extend storage life, adding sugar or salt to enhance flavour. Photograph: Getty Images

Ultraprocessed food linked to the worldwide epidemic of obesity

William Reville

There is a hypothesis that eating ultraprocessed foods can disrupt signals between the gut and the brain, encouraging us to keep eating

The Princeton Companion to Mathematic has articles on the origin of mathematics, its historical development and the main branches of the subject.

The vastness of mathematics: No one knows it all

Peter Lynch

The extensive Princeton Companion to Mathematics overview even needed a companion volume

Stamp featuring William Rowan Hamilton, an innovative mathematician and physicist of the highest order

Maths and poetry: Beauty is the link

Peter Lynch

For both mathematics and poetry, the ‘less is more’ principle often applies

Ireland hooker Rory Best. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

How to perform well under pressure

William Reville

Having a positive attitude about yourself can help you to perform better under stress

Columnists

David McWilliams

David McWilliams -

David McWilliams: Ignore the austerity ‘jihadis’. Here’s an alternative economic strategy

Pat Leahy - Political Editor

Pat Leahy: Whatever happens, this recession will change Irish politics

Cliff Taylor

Cliff Taylor -

Forget the €350 sideshow, mass youth unemployment is the real threat

Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter -

Universities are preoccupied with market growth as if educators were stocks and shares

Citizen Science The Irish Times and citizen science researchers have teamed up. See the results here

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Features & Opinion

Learning from food history to create a new sustainable future

Better to go back to our cultural roots, widen our palates and eat seafood from lower down the food chain

Why llamas could be key in the fight against Covid-19

A new study has found that antibodies in llamas’ blood could offer a crucial defence

Coronavirus: The misguided search for ‘patient zero’

The danger is that, like in the past, the person will become a scapegoat for all our fears

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