Connecting Science and Society

The mining industry plays a vital role in driving Mongolia’s economic growth and creating employment opportunities. However, in the Gobi Desert —one of the driest regions in Mongolia— water access, and community engagement remain critical challenges for the mining industry. In this region, water is a shared and scarce resource, relied upon by herders, towns, mining companies, wildlife, and fragile ecosystems alike.

A study by Dr Bolormaa Purevjav and her colleagues explored how a holistic approach which combines economic, social, and environmental principles called Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) can improve water sustainability in mining regions.

I’m a science and medical communications professional with a BSc (Hons) in Anatomy and an MSc in Nutrition and Public Health. My career revolves around communicating clinical data and broader scientific research to drive impact and increase engagement.
In addition to writing articles for Scientia, I work as a Senior Medical Writer to disseminate clinical trial data for patients and healthcare professionals. I’ve worked across a variety of communications and engagement projects, including publications, animations, infographics, plain language summaries, symposia at medical congresses, interviews with subject-matter experts, advisory boards, and workshops.
I enjoy translating complex and technical information into clear, compelling messages tailored to varied stakeholders including academics, industry, physicians, patients, and lay audiences. My passion lies in using effective science communications to support evidence-based decision making (whether at personal or policy level) and improve public health.

Quaternary ammonium compounds are a large class of compounds used as disinfectants in hospitals, restaurants, healthcare and animal care facilities, and are popular as household cleaners. With disease outbreaks increasing our fears about infections, the use of disinfectants has skyrocketed in recent years. Understandably, we all want to feel safe. However, as Professor Terry Hrubec from the Department of Biomedical Sciences of E. Via College of Osteopathic Medicine discovered, such products may be causing more harm than good.

A major new scientific resource has been produced with the support of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. Edited by Profs Ariel Dinar and Robert Mendelsohn, The Handbook on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation in Agriculture (Edward Elgar Publishing, May 2026) integrates evidence from empirical studies across five continents, providing one of the clearest pictures to-date of how climate change is influencing agriculture.
The studies range from large-scale econometric analyses to micro-level surveys, covering Africa, Europe, the United States, Brazil, China, and Mediterranean countries. The result is a body of work revealing scientifically rigorous patterns that are highly relevant for policy and practice. The foreword from Wolf Prize Laureate David Zilberman highlights how the Handbook’s findings are thematically organized into climate impacts, adaptation, mitigation, and governance.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers face increasing pressure to reduce solvent use, energy consumption and waste. Mechanochemistry explores mechanical force rather than heat to drive chemical reactions in the absence of solvents, and offers a promising alternative.
At the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Germany, Dr Jan-Hendrik Schöbel and Dr Michael Felderhoff are exploring how large, industrial milling technologies can be adapted to produce high-value pharmaceutical co-crystals cleanly and efficiently. Their recent studies demonstrate that both drum mills and attritor mills, equipment long used in mining and materials processing, can be repurposed for greener production of ibuprofen:nicotinamide co-crystals.

This book explores the history of the area in Turkey where these two cities lie. Prof Richard Ludueña and his daughter visited Harran and Sanliurfa (formerly Edessa) in 2014. He found them fascinating and wanted to learn more about their histories, but found no book that focused on their history from the beginning to modern times. So, he decided to write one.
Harran still bears its ancient name, but Edessa has had a great variety of names and is now called Sanliurfa. Our story goes back long before the cities were founded, back to the late Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe, where monuments have carvings consistent with a destructive comet.

Insufficient sleep can cause much more than tiredness and grouchiness in adolescents. As well as being important for their health, adolescents also need to get enough sleep to feel satisfied with their lives, according to a study by Dr Eun Jin Jung, from the Centre for Regional and Industrial HRD Research, Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Sejong, Republic of Korea.

Chemical reactions often demand precise control over their operating conditions to proceed efficiently. While chemists routinely use pH buffers to stabilise acidity levels, far less attention has been directed towards stabilising the electrochemical potential of solutions during oxidation–reduction reactions.
At Emory University, Dr Xinlin Lu, Dr Yurii Geletii, and Prof Craig Hill have pioneered a catalytic system that not only drives chemical reactions, but also acts as its own redox buffer. By automatically maintaining conditions optimal for electron transfers while converting malodorous thiols into odourless compounds, this innovation points to a new generation of catalysts that adjust themselves, delivering both efficiency and environmental benefits.

Avian necrotic enteritis (NE) is one of the most significant intestinal diseases affecting poultry worldwide, particularly broiler chickens. It causes major economic losses due to reduced growth rates, poor feed efficiency, and high mortality. The disease is caused by the bacterium Clostridium perfringens, specifically pathogenic type G strains. Dr Marie-Lou Gaucher from the Université de Montréal and her collaborators have been relentlessly studying ways to develop an effective vaccine against C. perfringens. Their promising findings may lead to innovative vaccination strategies and new methods to manage NE in poultry flocks.

Water resources are essential for human life. Knowing how to manage water, both now and in the future, is necessary to continue using it as well as possible. Nick Martin and Jeremy White are examining limitations to artificial intelligence applications in water resources generated from noisy and estimated data sets. For poor quality data sets, they found that machine learning models will perform poorly relative to tools that explicitly include physics-based descriptions of physical processes; this is because physics-based calculations can use both data and physics knowledge through data assimilation techniques.