Latest news with #UniversityOfLeeds
Telegraph
11-07-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
Watch: Four-legged ‘rescue robot' tackles rough terrain
With its stumbling gait and tentative steps it could be a baby animal learning to manoeuvre through unfamiliar terrain. But this is Clarence, the animal-inspired robot, which has been taught to navigate through the world like a dog or horse, and is the first in the world to be able to adapt to unknown surfaces. It is hoped it could be used in hazardous settings, such as bomb sites or dangerous search and rescue operations, where it is too risky to send in a human. Tests show it can successfully pick its way through tangled roots, shuffle through loose woodchips, stay upright in muddy fields and even negotiate uneven piles of planks. Joseph Humphreys, a postgraduate researcher from the University of Leeds who helped develop the artificial intelligence (AI) programming that allows Clarence to learn, said: 'It's similar to the Matrix, when Neo's skill in martial arts is downloaded into his brain, but he doesn't undergo any physical training in the real world. 'We tested the robot in the real-world, on surfaces it had never experienced before, and it successfully navigated them all. 'It was really rewarding to watch it adapt to all the challenges we set and seeing how the animal behaviour we had studied had become almost second nature for it.' Most robots are adept at following a specific task on familiar surfaces, but struggle when the environment changes. The researchers overcame the problem by instilling their system with natural animal motion strategies. Researchers took inspiration from dogs, cats and horses, which are expert at adjusting to different landscapes, quickly switching the way they move to save energy, maintain balance, or respond quickly to threats. The programme also teaches the robot how to transition between trotting, running, bounding and more, just like mammals do in nature. It means that Clarence does not just learn how to move, but learns how to decide which gait to use, when to switch, and how to adjust it in real time, even on terrain it has never encountered before. It took just nine hours for the robot to learn its new skills, considerably faster than the days or weeks most young animals take to confidently cross different surfaces. Professor Chengxu Zhou, senior author of the study from University College London Computer Science, said: 'This research was driven by a fundamental question: what if legged robots could move instinctively the way animals do? Instead of training robots for specific tasks, we wanted to give them the strategic intelligence animals use to adapt their gaits – using principles like balance, coordination, and energy efficiency. 'By embedding those principles into an AI system, we've enabled robots to choose how to move based on real-time conditions, not pre-programmed rules. That means they can navigate unfamiliar environments safely and effectively, even those that they haven't encountered before. 'Our long-term vision is to develop embodied AI systems – including humanoid robots – that move, adapt, and interact with the same fluidity and resilience as animals and humans.' The team say the achievement marks a major step forward in making legged robots more adaptable and capable of handling real-world challenges, in hazardous environments or where access is difficult. A robot that can navigate unfamiliar, complex terrain opens up new possibilities for them to be used in disaster response, planetary exploration, agriculture and infrastructure inspection. In the future, the team hopes to add more dynamic skills, such as long-distance jumping, climbing, and navigating steep or vertical terrains. The research was published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'The Great Dying' mass extinction was a warning from the trees, study says
It happened before, and could happen again…. That's the message in a new study about the catastrophic collapse of Earth's tropical forests due to natural volcanic causes 252 million years ago. The collapse of tropical forests was the primary cause of the prolonged global warming that followed, according to a new study published July 2 in the British journal Nature Communications. This coincided with a mass extinction, likely the worst in Earth's history. 'There is a warning here about the importance of Earth's present-day tropical forests," study co-author and University of Leeds professor Benjamin Mills said, in a statement: "If rapid warming causes them to collapse in a similar manner, then we should not expect our climate to cool to preindustrial levels, even if we stop emitting CO2. 'Indeed, warming could continue to accelerate in this case even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth's past.' The huge climate changes back then occurred during the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction – sometimes referred to as the "Great Dying," which happened around 252 million years ago, leading to the massive loss of marine species and significant declines in terrestrial plants and animals. The event has been attributed to intense global warming triggered by a period of volcanic activity in Siberia, known as the Siberian Traps, the study says. This rapid increase in carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere and the resulting temperature increase is thought to be the primary kill mechanism for much of life at the time, according to the Conversation. However, scientists had been unable to pinpoint why super-greenhouse conditions persisted for around five million years afterwards. Now, in the new study, researchers have gathered data that supports the theory that the demise of tropical forests, and their slow recovery, limited carbon sequestration – a process where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and held in plants, soils or minerals. Our current understanding is that it was high temperatures which resulted from huge volcanic carbon dioxide emissions over thousands of years, Mills said in an e-mail to USA TODAY. "This volcanic event is called the Siberian Traps and may be the biggest to ever have occurred." "Yes," Mills said, adding that the climate had already warmed, which initially caused the tropical forests to die back, but the removal of forests took away one of the planet's most important carbon removal processes – photosynthesis. The lack of this "carbon sink" caused CO2 levels to build up even further, which drove excess warming. "While the climate is currently warming (and is doing so faster than during the event 252 million years ago), we are not yet at the temperature where tropical forests are expected to reach a tipping point and transition into a carbon source rather than sink," Mills told USA TODAY. "So it is not happening now, but we may not be that far away." We have warmed the planet by about 1 degree C since the Industrial Revolution, and estimates for Amazon rainforest tipping points range from 2 to 6 degrees C. It is hard to estimate this accurately. The Triassic super-greenhouse took thousands of years to establish, but because we are emitting carbon dioxide much more quickly than in the deep past, we might expect effects to begin to occur "over hundreds of years," Mills said. "To see 'super greenhouse' conditions we would need to remove almost all of the tropical forested area. It is debatable whether this could occur in the present day where the plants are different, and the shape of the continents is different than in the past. But personally I do not want us to run this experiment!" Speaking about the new study, co-author Jianxin Yu of the China University of Geosciences added: 'Let's make sure our work transcends academia: it is a responsibility to all life on Earth, today and beyond." "Earth's story is still being written, and we all have a role in shaping its next chapter," Yu said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Forest loss fueled 'Great Dying' mass extinction, study says
CNN
02-07-2025
- Science
- CNN
The ‘Great Dying' wiped out 90% of life, then came 5 million years of lethal heat. New fossils explain why
Around 252 million years ago, life on Earth suffered its most catastrophic blow to date: a mass extinction event known as the 'Great Dying' that wiped out around 90% of life. What followed has long puzzled scientists. The planet became lethally hot and remained so for 5 million years. A team of international researchers say they have now figured out why using a vast trove of fossils — and it all revolves around tropical forests. Their findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, may help solve a mystery, but they also spell out a dire warning for the future as humans continue to heat up the planet by burning fossil fuels. The Great Dying was the worst of the five mass extinction events that have punctuated Earth's history, and it marked the end of the Permian geological period. It has been attributed to a period of volcanic activity in a region known as the Siberian Traps, which released huge amounts of carbon and other planet-heating gases into the atmosphere, causing intense global warming. Enormous numbers of marine and land-based plants and animals died, ecosystems collapsed and oceans acidified. What has been less clear, however, is why it got so hot and why 'super greenhouse' conditions persisted for so long, even after volcanic activity ceased. 'The level of warming is far beyond any other event,' said Zhen Xu, a study author and a research fellow at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. Some theories revolve around the ocean and the idea that extreme heat wiped out carbon-absorbing plankton, or changed the ocean's chemical composition to make it less effective at storing carbon. But scientists from the University of Leeds in England and the China University of Geosciences thought the answer may lie in a climate tipping point: the collapse of tropical forests. The Great Dying extinction event is unique 'because it's the only one in which the plants all die off,' said Benjamin Mills, a study author and a professor of Earth system evolution at the University of Leeds. To test the theory, they used an archive of fossil data in China that has been put together over decades by three generations of Chinese geologists. They analyzed the fossils and rock formations to get clues about climate conditions in the past, allowing them to reconstruct maps of plants and trees living on each part of the planet before, during and after the extinction event. 'Nobody's ever done that before,' Mills told CNN. The results confirmed their hypothesis, showing that the loss of vegetation during the mass extinction event significantly reduced the planet's ability to store carbon, meaning very high levels remained in the atmosphere. Forests are a vital climate buffer as they suck up and store planet-heating carbon. They also play a crucial role in 'silicate weathering,' a chemical process involving rocks and rainwater — a key way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Tree and plant roots help this process by breaking up rock and allowing fresh water and air to reach it. Once the forests die, 'you're changing the carbon cycle,' Mills said, referring to the way carbon moves around the Earth, between the atmosphere, land, oceans and living organisms. Michael Benton, a professor of paleontology at the University of Bristol, who was not involved in the study, said the research shows 'the absence of forests really impacts the regular oxygen-carbon cycles and suppresses carbon burial and so high levels of CO2 remain in the atmosphere over prolonged periods,' he told CNN. It highlights 'a threshold effect,' he added, where the loss of forests becomes 'irreversible on ecological time scales.' Global politics currently revolve around the idea that if carbon dioxide levels can be controlled, damage can be reversed. 'But at the threshold, it then becomes hard for life to recover,' Benton said. This is a key takeaway from the study, Mills said. It shows what might happen if rapid global warming causes the planet's rainforests to collapse in the future — a tipping point scientists are very concerned about. Even if humans stop pumping out planet-heating pollution altogether, the Earth may not cool. In fact, warming could accelerate, he said. There is a sliver of hope: The rainforests that currently carpet the tropics may be more resilient to high temperatures than those that existed before the Great Dying. This is the question the scientists are tackling next. This study is still a warning, Mills said. 'There is a tipping point there. If you warm tropical forests too much, then we have a very good record of what happens. And it's extremely bad.'
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
What happened next? Demobilised WWI soldiers to be focus of Carlisle talk
Cumbria's Museum of Military Life in Carlisle Castle is set to host a talk about demobilised soldiers who returned home after the First World War. On Tuesday, July 8, Jessica Meyer, a professor of British social and cultural history at the University of Leeds, will explore the return of soldiers to Britain. Professor Meyer will delve into both the physical and emotional aspects of soldiers' homecomings, touching on the concept of 'homes fit for heroes.' The discussion will consider both former servicemen who were physically and psychologically affected by their war experiences and those who were not. Professor Meyer aims to demonstrate how the return of soldiers after war shaped British society in the 20th century. The talk is part of a broader exploration of the impact of demobilisation in Britain following the First World War, a project Professor Meyer has been working on. The event is set to start at 6pm, with doors opening at 5.30pm. A licensed bar will be available for attendees. Tickets for the talk are priced at £5 each, or £6 on the door. They can be booked by calling the museum on 01228 532774, emailing enquiries@ or online via the museum's website at It is recommended that attendees book their tickets in advance to secure their seats. Professor Meyer's research interests include the histories of war, gender, and health, with a particular focus on the First World War and popular culture. She has published two books, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain and An Equal Burden: The Men of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War, as well as several book chapters and journal articles. She also co-hosts Oh! What a Lovely Podcast and writes the Arms and the Medical Man blog.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Climate Experts Issue Stark Warning About Global Warming Timeline
A new report from more than 60 of the world's top climate scientists paints a sobering picture: humanity could exhaust its carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in just three years. If current emissions continue unchecked, the long-established target set by the Paris Agreement may soon slip permanently out of reach, BBC News reported. Since the late 1800s, average global temperatures have climbed steadily, driven by relentless carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil, and gas, as well as widespread deforestation. While the 1.5 °C threshold was meant to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists say we're now hurtling toward it faster than anyone expected. "We're seeing some unprecedented changes," said lead author Professor Piers Forster of the University of Leeds. "The heating of the Earth and sea-level rise are accelerating, and it's tied directly to emissions." The updated analysis, released this week, estimates that only 130 billion metric tons of CO₂ can still be emitted globally to stay under the 1.5 °C limit with a 50 percent chance. At the current rate of around 40 billion tons per year, that leaves just over three years before the budget is spent. Adding to the urgency, last year marked the first time global temperatures exceeded 1.5 °C for an entire 12-month period. While one year doesn't constitute a formal breach of the Paris goal, the trend is alarming. Scientists warn that continued warming will bring more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and ecosystem disruptions, affecting millions of people worldwide. Much of the excess heat has been absorbed by the oceans, leading to faster sea-level rise and marine ecosystem damage. The rate of sea-level rise has doubled since the 1990s. Still, there's a sliver of hope. The report notes that while emissions remain high, their rate of increase has slowed, thanks in part to clean energy technologies. Experts stress that aggressive emission cuts now could still blunt the worst impacts. "Every fraction of a degree matters," said climate scientist Joeri Rogelj. "Reducing emissions today will ease suffering tomorrow."Climate Experts Issue Stark Warning About Global Warming Timeline first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 19, 2025
