How a repurposed medical device is helping us investigate ancient climate tipping points
Asja Radja / wiki, CC BY-SA Imagine being tasked with counting every blade of grass in a field, noting every single species as you go. This is not far from the challenge many scientists face when analysing microscopic samples packed with thousands of tiny particles. Imaging flow cytometry (IFC) solves this by guiding particles single-file […]
Our Land: who owns the countryside? New documentary explores the access divide in England and Wales
Directed by Orban Wallace, Our Land explores the countryside access debate in England and Wales through interviews, pastoral shots, lavish illustrations and a walk in the country where the sun always seems to shine. One percent of landowners own 50% of English and Welsh land. But the right of open access to land by the […]
Why climate action stalls, despite widespread popular support
Workers in developing countries, like these men on a building site in Bangladesh, are more likely get heat stress as temperatures rise. Mahmud Hossain Opu/ Royal Holloway, University of London, CC BY-NC-ND What’s the link between the global economy and the climate? Consumption drives extraction and carbon emissions. But there is more. The inequalities of […]
Why politicians can’t fix potholes permanently
David Michael Bellis/Shutterstock Potholes are a safety risk, source of vehicle damage and recurring annoyance in the UK. They gain special visibility at times of local elections, given that the vast majority of roads are maintained by local authorities. A survey conducted in April found that road condition was the top local issue for voters […]
The ocean is fighting climate change and we’re trying to help it – here’s how
Diliana Nikolova / shutterstock We replaced the stove with plywood, turning the kitchen of the dive boat into an impromptu research lab. Plugging in wires and connecting tubing, we assembled a scientific instrument within the cramped cabin. Then we cast off into Halifax Harbour, Canada, surveying the turquoise waters for signs of an unusual test: […]
English local elections 2026: a story of a new kind of politics
Every election is a storytelling contest, with campaigning parties competing to frame the plot. This year’s local elections, the largest test of voters’ mood since the 2024 general election, have been dominated by two master-narratives. The first is about the demise of the old two-party system under which Labour and Conservatives have been the battling […]
Iran war has shown the limits of US power
Donald Trump in the Mar a Lago situation room overseeing the launch of Operation Epic Fury on February 28. White House gallery In his 1873 book On War, the great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that: “War is the realm of uncertainty.” He would have been at home in Washington this week where […]
How Pakistan became the primary mediator between the US and Iran
Pakistan has emerged as a central diplomatic broker in the conflict between the US and Iran. When announcing a pause to the US operation to guide stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz on May 6, Donald Trump said he had made the decision “based on the request of Pakistan”. The Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz […]
The AI scientist: now academic papers can be fully automated, what does this mean for the future of research?
whiteMocca/Shutterstock Until recently, AI’s role in research felt like having a useful assistant. It could summarise a paper, clean up a dataset or draft an abstract. Researchers were still in charge of the thinking. That changed in late 2025 when cutting-edge “frontier” AI models became capable of reasoning and planning reliably by themselves. A key […]
Iran war has become a lesson in how power really works
For months, the Iran war was framed through the language of military success. This was shaped in part by longstanding orientalist assumptions reflected in the rhetoric of leaders such as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu about the relative weakness and fragility of states such as Iran. Encouraged by Israeli intelligence capabilities, precision strikes and overwhelming […]