Why has Britain’s grass turned yellow? A plant scientist explains what happens next
Fields, parks and lawns across Europe have turned to straw this summer. Landscapes thousands of years old have been revealed as green outlines against yellow backgrounds, where ancient underground walls and ditches retain enough water to sustain pockets of grass above them. Lawns and parklands have been especially affected because what water is available is […]
Five foods that can help keep children hydrated during a heatwave
Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB/Shutterstock “Have another drink.” It can become a familiar refrain for parents during a heatwave, particularly when a child is busy playing and has little interest in stopping for a glass of water. Keeping up fluid intake becomes more important as temperatures rise because heat increases water loss, particularly through sweating. But a child’s […]
How warfare has been ‘gamified’ in Ukraine
Ukrainian military personnel operate a drone from an undisclosed location in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. lev radin / Shutterstock Where can you score 12 points for killing a Russian soldier in a drone attack, 20 for damaging a tank and up to 50 for destroying a mobile rocket system? Not on the latest […]
Why an 120-year-old warning about reading feels uncomfortably familiar
Girl Reading by Vera Alabaster. Harbour Cottage Trust, CC BY-NC In 1906, the journalist W.T. Stead warned in A Plea for the Revival of Reading that Britain faced a reading crisis. People, he complained, no longer read books. Instead, they skimmed newspapers on trains, forgot what they had read by lunchtime and increasingly preferred distraction […]
Too hot to think? Why extreme heat can affect how well our brain works
Stock-Asso/ Shutterstock Ever feel that the arrival of summer sun makes you feel a bit dopey? You wouldn’t be the only one. Soaring temperatures are known for their ability to slow our thought processes, making even everyday tasks seem like a baffling ordeal. But what is actually happening inside our heads when the heat is […]
AI-designed viruses are a test of whether biosecurity can keep pace
TSViPhoto/Shutterstock Scientists have crossed an important line in biological engineering. In a recent study, researchers used artificial intelligence to design complete sets of genetic instructions for bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. Some of those computer-generated designs produced working viruses when they were built and tested in the laboratory. These viruses were designed to infect bacteria […]
Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza roadmap – history tells us Israel may be planning to stay
The recent decision by Benjamin Netanyahu to reject the Board of Peace plan for Gaza sponsored by the US president Donald Trump is concerning – but is hardly surprising. The 15-point roadmap, published by Trump’s Board of Peace, envisages Hamas’ disarmament and Israel’s phased withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian territory would then be […]
What it’s like to discover an ancient Egyptian tomb – and the race against time to preserve it
The first moment you look inside a newly discovered ancient tomb is at once exciting and terrifying. I was fortunate to experience this recently as director of an international research team carrying out fieldwork in the Theban necropolis, a Unesco world heritage site near the modern Egyptian city of Luxor. Our project’s primary aim is […]
Is hope back? Why it’s such an important part of Andy Burnham’s big plan
Andy Burnham has embarked on a tour of the UK where he will champion a “ten-year plan to bring back hope”. This has been the language of the early stages of the Burnham premiership – in his first speech in Downing Street, he proclaimed it the moment when “Britain starts to believe again, the moment […]
Putting out wildfires: how peat restoration has reduced fire risk in Indonesia’s tropical forests
Tropical peatlands are degraded by repeated forest fires. nasichsan/Shutterstock Peatland fires in Indonesia pose a major threat to habitats, wildlife and people. That risk is exacerbated by the country’s periodic El Niño warming phases, which bring prolonged drought. Massive fires have occurred in all the recent El Niño years, including 2015, 2019 and 2023. With […]