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 […]
How animals prepare for war
Chacma baboons don’t hang around in risky areas. Danita Delimont/Shutterstock Battles between rival groups are a story as old as time. This sounds like a human story, but it is also one that is playing out across nature. Conflict between groups of animals competing for territory and resources is widespread, and contests between animals can […]
Is this the world’s oldest image of a mind-altering plant?
Deep in the El Castillo cave in northern Spain, up a side passage off the main pathway, there is a small painted panel most visitors would walk straight past. Created some 17,000 to 15,000 years ago, it shows five red signs, each shaped a little like a bell. A natural stone ledge runs beneath them […]
The Fly at 40: why Cronenberg’s grotesque classic remains his most affecting film
Surely one of horror’s most promising unmade films is David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein. This adaptation was to be a contemporary rethinking of Mary Shelley’s novel featuring a humanised, intelligent creature. Despite an advert in a 1980 issue of Variety, the project never got far into development. To anyone familiar with Cronenberg’s obsession with the body, with […]