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‘Mega-events’ can nudge climate-friendly behavior

Incentives such as merchandise discounts and reduced ticket prices are among the most effective ways to cut the environmental impact of “mega-events” like concert tours and  World Cups, according to University of Cambridge researchers.

The recommendation follows an analysis of Coldplay’s 2024 European tour and projections for the expanded 2026 FIFA World Cup, both of which show that audience travel is by far the largest source of carbon emissions.

Published in Communications Sustainability, the study found that Coldplay’s efforts to encourage sustainable travel — including apps comparing low-carbon transport options and merchandise discounts for fans who traveled sustainably — helped reduce travel-related emissions by 48 percent. Combined with other environmental measures, the tour’s overall carbon footprint was nearly halved, with researchers estimating that 98 percent of the emissions reductions came from changes in fan travel behavior.

The researchers estimate that the 48-team 2026 FIFA World Cup will generate approximately 4.23 million tons of carbon emissions, with 82 percent coming from spectator travel and around 3 million tons from air travel alone. Passing the full cost of offsetting those emissions directly to fans would add an average of $114 to every match ticket, the study found, making incentives to reduce travel emissions a more practical solution.

The study proposes a two-step framework for making mega-events more sustainable. First, organizers should determine whether an event’s social and economic benefits justify its climate impact. Second, responsibility for emissions should be shared, with organizers covering operational emissions while encouraging audiences to reduce indirect emissions through travel incentives, smarter venue selection and pricing strategies.

Researchers say host locations could also play a major role in reducing emissions. Around 40 percent of international attendees at the 2026 World Cup were expected to travel from Europe, meaning a European host nation would have generated substantially fewer travel emissions than North America. Other ideas include discounts for rail travel or ride sharing, carbon charges weighted toward premium tickets, and even a small broadcast fee to help fund emissions reductions.

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Climate change and penguin
poop

What can penguin poop tell us about how climate change is affecting the Antarctic ecosystem? A lot, according to scientists who used decades of NASA satellite images to analyze changes in the diets of Antarctic Adélie penguins.

The birds’ guano color changes depending on what they eat, and that color tells the researchers that penguins living in areas with more sea ice consume more fish, while those living in areas with less sea ice consume more krill.

The findings, published in Current Biology, analyze penguin colonies across nearly the species’ entire range between 1984 and 2013.

Penguin chicks that eat fish grow larger; populations that consume more krill experience long-term population declines, scientists find.

Researchers say the findings suggest that shrinking sea ice is altering the Antarctic food web by reducing the availability of fish and forcing penguins to depend on krill, which is also becoming less abundant in some areas. Because Adélie penguins are widespread across Antarctica, scientists say they provide an important indicator of broader ecosystem changes driven by climate warming.

“Antarctica has experienced rapid environmental change in recent decades, and this approach gives us a new and powerful tool to learn how it has affected penguins,” says co-author Michael Polito, a professor of ocean sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

More like this: The immensity of intensity

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‘Botanical Pompeii’ helps rewrite
the origins of fruit

Large fruits and seeds didn’t evolve until after the mass-extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. At least, that’s what scientists have long believed.

But a new study in the journal Science casts that belief in doubt, finding that dinosaurs ate a lot more fruit than previously thought.

“This paper focuses on a fossil forest in New Mexico and the preserved fruits, seeds and other reproductive structures of the plants that lived there,” says co-author James Saulsbury, a postdoctoral researcher in the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. “These fossils change how we understand the way flowering plants became modern in terms of their reproductive ecology.”

Paleobotanists generally believed that flowering plants, which first appeared about 136 million years ago, evolved modern reproductive strategies only after dinosaurs died off at the close of the Cretaceous period.

Researchers said the fossils, preserved in volcanic ash at what has been described as a “botanical Pompeii,” provide a rare snapshot of an ancient forest ecosystem.

Among the discoveries were fossil fruits as large as grapes, unusually large for flowering plants of that period and evidence that modern reproductive strategies were already emerging during the late Cretaceous.

More like this: Archaeologists say today’s plastics are tomorrow’s fossils

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Home invader illuminates an
alien world

A meteor passing just south of the Statue of Liberty shook New York City on July 16, 2024. Now a team of researchers reports in Science Advances on the more than 4-kilogram meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey house.

“A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids — a process not previously known from this type of proto planet world,” said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

The meteorite was tracked by American Meteor Society cameras as well as a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey. Those cameras let researchers track the meteorite’s trajectory back to low in the asteroid belt.

Researchers credit the fast actions of the homeowner with the pristine condition of the fragments.

“I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom,” the homeowners says. “I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas.”

He used disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.

The high concentration of salt in briny fluids could create molecules crucial to life on Earth, the team says.

More like this: This is planet Earth

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Smart mouth guards not so smart?

In 2024, World Rugby made using instrumented mouth guards mandatory for elite-level competition. And for good reason.

A recent review of studies measuring concussion incidence between 2014 and 2025 in the Rugby Union concludes that 9.74 concussions occur per 1,000 player hours. And repetitive head injury has been shown to lead to eventual cognitive complications.

Basically, more serious bonks on the head means players are more likely to suffer later in life.

But do these mouth guards work?

They do, but a new study from University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka in New Zealand reveals they don’t work effectively for everyone.

“The problem is that almost every commercial system uses a one-size-fits-all approach, assuming every player has the same head as a 50th-percentile adult male, whether they’re a 10-year-old girl or a 130kg premier men’s player,” says Melanie Bussey of Otago’s School of Physical Education Sport and Exercise Sciences.

CAPTION: Rugby scrum IMAGE: Shutterstock

She calls for the sports-tech industry and researchers to account for people of different sex, age and size when designing and collating statistics on the impact of such preventative wearables.

When testing a more inclusive head model for females, the injury risk score changed by nearly 54 percent. Other testing models were adapted for weight and showed significant differences. These results also impact on the indicators of whether individuals were high-risk, which is a highly notable preventative measure.

Bussey, lead author on the paper, says this is a simple fix.

“If we want smart mouth guards to improve safety across the whole game, then the modeling behind them needs to be inclusive. Accurate monitoring is not just about better technology. It is about making sure that technology works for everyone.”

More like this: Putting the pressure on injury prevention