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New allergy test promises safer antibiotic use

Allergies to antibiotics are the commonest form of medication allergies and, in the worst cases, can result in anaphylaxis and death. SINTEF is participating in the development of a new allergy test that will make it easier to provide patients with safe and correct treatments.

Inside the ice caves on Svalbard

Svalbard’s cold climate means that its glaciers are solid and frozen to the ground. This allows for winter travel into unique ice caves that contain plants and material that froze into the glacial ice as it formed.

Going deep to learn the secrets of Japan’s earthquakes

The 11 March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake was the largest and most destructive in the history of Japan. Japanese researchers — and Norwegian partners — are hard at work trying to understand just what made it so devastating.

Team building doesn’t really work

Rafting, paintball and go-karting on company outings do not improve interactions at work. Strangely enough, these activities can make things worse.

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Elevated stress levels among Norway’s youngest in childcare

Researchers measured the stress hormone cortisol in 112 toddlers from 85 different childcare centres in six municipalities, approximately five months after they started attending. Children with the longest childcare days (8-9 hours) showed an increase in cortisol during the day.

Eight a day is clearly best for your heart

You’ve heard it a thousand times, that little catchphrase with the magic number encouraging you to eat “five a day” of fruits and vegetables for better health. But it turns out that the real magic number is eight, according to a new comprehensive study just published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Making Arctic travel safer

Help is not just a phone call away if you have an accident in the Arctic. That’s why the far northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is establishing an educational and research centre for Arctic safety.

A force more deadly than polar bears

You might think that polar bears— and the potential for attack— are the biggest danger on the Norwegian island archipelago of Svalbard. But avalanches kill far more people on Svalbard than polar bears ever have.

New technique yields healthier blood vessels after heart surgery

Surgeons often take a blood vessel from your leg to graft onto your heart during a coronary bypass surgery. The practice can lead to scarring in many patients, which in turn can cause another heart attack. A new technique under development may help prevent this problem.

Unpredictable disasters require new thinking

When the unthinkable happens and the unpredictable takes over, crises cannot be handled by the book. What should the police have actually done during the 2011 attack on the Norwegian island of Utøya?

Crushing ice to save platforms

It’s been a warm winter on Svalbard this year. But this doesn’t apply to the laboratory where Niek Heijkoop works. There it’s a stable -10° Celsius

Svalbard’s electric power 
could come from hydrogen

Longyearbyen, the world’s most northerly city, could save more than 100 million kroner (11.5 million US dollars) a year in the cost of electricity, if a completely green hydrogen-fuelled power station is built in preference to laying a cable from the mainland, according to calculations made by SINTEF scientists.

Support, comfort from online weigh-loss group

Online weight loss forums protect participants from public fat shaming, and offer them a place to speak out without being confronted by normal-weight individuals, medical science or the authorities.

A future for skiing in a warmer world

As the world struggles to make progress to limit climate change, researchers are finding ways to adapt to warmer winter temperatures — by developing environmentally friendly ways of producing artificial snow.

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Preventing LNG accidents

Eskil Aursand is working to make marine production and shipping of liquefied natural gas (LNG) safer. His efforts were recently recognized with the award of a Fulbright Scholarship.

Martin’s world

Visualizing oil reservoirs or tectonic plates under the seafloor requires lots of computing power and the imagination to envision what the data are showing you. That’s Martin Landrø’s work world. But he’s also fascinated by how teachers from a century ago taught their students about the Earth and the way it moves around the sun.

Putting Bluefin tuna back on the menu — by farming them

The Japanese eat one in ten of the world’s fish, and 80 per cent of the planet’s prized —and critically threatened — Bluefin tuna. Tuna aquaculture pioneered at Kindai University in Japan offers hope for both fish lovers and the fish.

Using Big Data to understand immune system responses

An enzyme found in many bacteria, including the bacterium that gives us strep throat, has given mankind a cheap and effective tool with which to edit our own genes. This technology, called CRISPR, is also being used to understand how the immune system responds to a viral attack.