Sweeteners and the quest for the perfect alternative to sugar
Sweets for my sweets … Fuss Sergey Designing a series of sweetener trials seemed straightforward enough to us as behavioural scientists who specialise in human appetite and obesity. The plan was simple: replace the added sugar in a range of foods with different classes of alternative sweeteners, holding everything else constant. We would start with […]
Floods and finance: why climate change will become a more pressing economic problem for UK households
A street in Worcester, England, after heavy rainfall in 2023. Chris Homer/Shutterstock New Orleans could be surrounded by sea water in a matter of decades according to new research. The study says the US city has reached a “point of no return”, and that rising temperatures and sea levels mean the process of relocating residents […]
The puppet shows bringing storytelling and solace to bomb shelters in Ukraine
As war threatens to erase everyday life in Ukraine, artists have turned to puppetry, one of the oldest forms of storytelling. Light enough to travel, intimate enough to gather a crowd and able to capture the attention of children, puppet shows have become resilient tools of resistance, support and relief for the people of a […]
Donald Trump left Beijing empty-handed – but avoided something worse
When Britain sent its first formal diplomatic mission to China in 1793, one of the participants from London, Peter Auber, remarked that the group had been “received with the utmost politeness, treated with the utmost hospitality, watched with the utmost vigilance and dismissed with the utmost civility”. The mission, which aimed to open trade and […]
Why has PCOS been given a new name?
PMOS is a complex hormonal and metabolic disorder. Toey Andante/ Shutterstock For more than two decades, I have studied a condition that shapes the lives of about 10-13% of women. This condition causes complex, wide-ranging symptoms such as irregular periods, excessive hair growth, weight gain, acne and difficulty getting pregnant. Until a few days ago, […]
Eaten, used as taxis and vomited up: how bees support other animals
The importance of bees for pollinating wild plants and crops is well known. If we lose the bees, we lose our food. But this is only part of the picture. Bees also support a hidden network of other species, sometimes as mutual partners, sometimes as prey, sometimes as other unwilling victims. Many organisms depend on […]
From landslide to leadership crisis: where did it all go wrong for Keir Starmer?
The failure of many of the UK’s recent prime ministers, who have passed through Downing Street in quick succession, seems easy to explain. Theresa May couldn’t do what she promised and didn’t “get Brexit done”. Boris Johnson broke his own rules, and the law. Liz Truss failed through sheer incompetence. But Keir Starmer won an […]
How studying friendship has changed the way I understand my own loneliness
A few years ago, I had just moved into a house. As relatively recent graduates, my husband and I had struggled with the banks to secure a mortgage – and worse still, I had a humanities background that didn’t exactly guarantee employment. But after approaching several banks, we managed to persuade a kind loan officer […]
The conspiracy theorists who feel vindicated by the Epstein files
Christopher Penler/Shutterstock At 8.16am on August 10 2019, a post appeared on the online forum 4Chan: “[D]ont ask me how I know, but Epstein died an hour ago from hanging, cardiac arrest. Screencap this.” ABC News broke the story that financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had died in prison, 38 minutes later. 4Chan […]
Paula Rego’s Story Line – an exhibition that invites exploration of the ambiguous narratives the Portuguese artist drew
At first glance, these look like sketches – the kind artists make on the way to something more finished. But that expectation doesn’t quite hold. The drawings assert themselves: restless, unresolved, and often more direct than the paintings they eventually lead to. This is Story Line, the latest exhibition of Paula Rego at the Victoria […]