Florence Buchanan: the pioneering physiologist whose face was lost to history
An undated photographic portrait captioned ‘Florence Buchanan’ in Lilian Adam Smith’s privately printed 1941 Buchanan family memoir. A Memoir of the Buchanan Family, National Library of Scotland, Acc.9446/400., CC BY-NC-SA For more than a century, we could see Florence Buchanan’s science but not Florence Buchanan. Her papers and electrical traces survived, and her work placed […]
‘Airport malaria’ is rare, but can be deadly when doctors don’t expect it
A few days after landing at Frankfurt Airport, several people who had never left Germany developed a fever. None had travelled anywhere near a malaria zone – but the mosquitoes that infected them had. That’s the theory behind a small but serious cluster of malaria cases now linked to the airport – three of them […]
A biologist queries whether AI ‘borrowed’ his work to make major discovery – an expert explains the rules
AI company Anthropic recently announced that its popular system Claude had identified an unusual family of biological molecules. These molecules were enzymes, a type of protein that speeds up chemical reactions in living organisms. The new group of enzymes were discovered in bacteriophages – viruses that infect bacteria. Anthropic named them array-associated reverse transcriptases (ARTs). […]
Anne Carson wins Nobel prize in literature – how she discovered new possibilities within language
Anne Carson in 2024. Princeton Legacy Library/Penguin/New Directions Publishing Corporation/Jay Dixit, CC BY-ND For over four decades, Anne Carson has been quietly redrawing the map of contemporary literature. Poet, translator, classicist, essayist, performer and visual artist, she has produced a body of work that refuses easy categorisation. Yet what is most striking about Carson, the […]
Grief, anger and elections: Israel marks three years since October 7 attacks as nation prepares to vote
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot took to social media as their country marked three years since the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7. As the country mourned, the rival politicians played the blame game. Eisenkot is the man widely thought to be most likely to beat Netanyahu in […]
Andrew Garfield plays a ploughman in The Uprising – but the real medieval rebels weren’t all peasants
The Uprising is the first film inspired by the peasants’ revolt of the summer of 1381 – the largest popular rebellion in medieval England. The revolt was triggered by the heavy-handed administration of a poll tax that required a fixed sum to be collected from all adults. The tax was levied to finance a faltering […]
Social media provides valued community spaces for autistic young people
Dejan Dundjerski/Shutterstock Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition which influences how people communicate and process information. A significant proportion of autistic children do not speak, or only speak a few words. Many find it difficult to communicate face to face, especially when interaction is fast moving or dependent on interpreting bodily cues. Social media offers what […]
Hospital appointments can make greener travel harder
Vinokurov Yury/Shutterstock The timing of a hospital appointment does more than tell you when to see a doctor. It can also shape how you get there. For some older patients, an early appointment can fall before their concessionary bus pass, which provides free bus travel, becomes valid. An unreliable bus service can mean having to […]
Kemi Badenoch is gearing up for a ‘battle of ideas’ with Labour
Kemi Badenoch’s closing conference speech to the Conservative party conference sought to galvanise the membership by framing the coming years as “a battle of ideas” over how Britain is governed. The Conservative leader employed a combination of emotions, evidence and narrative in the speech. As a way of setting out the tone, these are effective […]
Five ways to enjoy fashion as a hobby without indulging in overconsumption
You can enjoy fashion without constantly buying new things. Anh V/Unsplash Fashion lovers are generally associated with bursting wardrobes and chasing the latest trends. But that reputation is beginning to shift. In the last few years, market surveys have found that around a third of shoppers are now buying second hand clothing. For gen Z, […]