Student research stories featured by the BBC

Two student-led studies published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics run by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Science have been featured on the BBC's '10 things we didn't know last week', which highlights research about interesting and unexpected topics from across the week.

In the article a paper by Natural Sciences students into the feasibility of crying a river has been mentioned. The study examined the plausibility of people around the world crying enough tears to create a river, based on the flow rate of the world’s shortest river - and found that, with the average volume of a human tear being around 6.2 micro litres, this would be far more than the world’s population could cry.

Another study published in the Journal concerns the fictional Borrowers and what the world would be like to them given their miniature proportions. Written by students at McMaster University who contribute articles to the journal alongside students at Leicester, the study suggests that scaled down to Borrower size, people would experience reduced hearing and sight, extremely high voice pitch and an inability to maintain normal body temperatures.

The Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics is a peer-reviewed student journal run by the University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Science. Students from the University of Leicester (UK) and McMaster University (Canada) have contributed to this year’s journal. The student-run journal is designed to give students practical experience of writing, editing, publishing and reviewing scientific papers.