Researchers have successfully used quantum states to mix a molecule with light at room temperature, which will aid in the exploration of quantum technologies and provide new ways to manipulate the physical and chemical properties of matter.

From wind turbines and solar photovoltaics to grey water recycling and electric vehicles, technology is making it ever easier for us to be green – yet many of us are not. Now, Cambridge researchers are discovering that our personalities and communities have a major impact on our environmental decisions, opening up new ways to ‘nudge’ us into saving energy and carbon.

Why is Milton Keynes one of the most successful cities in the UK, and Dundee one of the least? What gives Leeds its economic edge over Liverpool? How did London survive the 1990s recession, going from boom to bust and boom again? Researchers are asking these questions and many more in the largest ever analysis of what makes cities thrive.

Bhaskar Vira (Department of Geography and University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute) discusses ways of dealing with the crisis affecting India’s water resources.

Researchers have devised a new method for stacking microscopic marbles into regular layers, producing intriguing materials which scatter light into intense colours, and which change colour when twisted or stretched.

Michael Gaultois (Department of Chemistry), Joshua Conrad Jackson (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill), Ian Mahar (Boston University), and Jaan Altosaar (Princeton University) discuss why much reporting on science is currently failing to resolve the trade-off between accessibility and accountability.

A symbiotic relationship that has existed since the time of the dinosaurs is at risk of ending, as habitat loss and environmental change mean that a species of Australian crayfish and the tiny worms that depend on them are both at serious risk of extinction. 

Astronomers have found the first evidence of comets around a star similar to the sun, providing an opportunity to study what our solar system was like as a ‘baby’.

Researchers have compiled the first global set of observations of flow within the Earth’s mantle – the layer between the crust and the core – and found that it is moving much faster than has been predicted.

Species of single-celled algae use whip-like appendages called flagella to coordinate their movements and achieve a remarkable diversity of swimming gaits.