Windfarms on this Scottish isle are contentious – renewables must work for local people too
Turbines owned by the Galson Estate Trust, Lewis, Scotland. Laure Leglise, CC BY-NC-ND The landscape on the remote Isle of Lewis is striking: a mix of rugged terrain, peatlands, moorlands, lochs, sandy beaches and cliffs. This island at the northern end of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, has one of the UK’s highest levels of fuel […]
Do you lose your whole day to one appointment? ‘Waiting mode’ may be why
voronaman/Shutterstock You have a 3pm appointment. It’s now 10am and somehow your entire day already feels out of reach. Maybe you find yourself unable to start anything properly. You feel on edge, waiting for something to begin, or end. You check the time again and again. Even a positive, planned event, like a friend visiting […]
Why tiny amounts of vitamin B12 matter more as we age
Berna Namoglu/Shutterstock Two micrograms is an almost unimaginably small amount. It weighs less than a tiny fragment of a grain of table salt. Yet adults need only around this amount of vitamin B12 each day, depending on the guideline used, to support red blood cells, nerves and DNA production. In 2026, it is 100 years […]
What is the Common Travel Area? Why the Ireland-UK border arrangement isn’t a ‘loophole’ for migrants
A horrific knife attack in Belfast has exacerbated tensions which have spilled over into widespread disorder. Much of the violence has targeted migrants and ethnic minorities. Hadi Alodid, 30, a Sudanese refugee who entered the UK in 2023 via Ireland, has been charged with attempted murder. Politicians of all stripes have used the attack to […]
AI doesn’t just help us think, it thinks instead of us: what this means for the process of learning
Deep in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes prisoners chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows cast on a wall by firelight for reality itself. They name the shadows, debate them and develop expertise about them. The prisoners are completely, sincerely wrong, and they have no idea. The cave isn’t a place of stupidity, it’s […]
The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future
The Gulf Stream shifts warm water across the Atlantic to Europe. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, CC BY-SA Around 13,000 years ago, as the world was emerging from the grip of the last ice age, much of the North Atlantic region plunged back into near-glacial conditions. Sea ice expanded across the North Atlantic, […]
Creative employers are struggling to fill vacancies due to a lack of skills – here’s how we can fix that
Skills matter enormously when it comes to retaining the UK’s global competitiveness in the creative industries. Forecasts suggest that demand for additional jobs in the sector is set to grow in the coming years. But does the UK’s creative workforce possess the required skills to meet this demand? In May 2026, I co-authored a report […]
Why Britain’s regeneration policies keep missing the point – expert panel
After the mainstream parties suffered big losses in Britain’s local elections in May, they might be wondering how they can win back voters in left-behind parts of the country. Labour’s Pride in Place scheme – £5.8 billion to be shared between some of the UK’s most deprived communities – doesn’t seem to have won the […]
The ticket price fiasco for the men’s Fifa World Cup has been a spectacular own goal
In sport, fairness matters. But when it comes to buying tickets to watch the world’s biggest ever sporting event, money matters too. Attending the men’s Fifa World Cup 2026 will be much more expensive than any previous World Cup. And that’s not what fans were promised. In fact, when the US, Canada and Mexico set […]
The fraudsters’ playbook: our study of Enron traders shows how easily the language of trust can be abused
From election debates to job interviews, language shapes our perceptions of how trustworthy other people are. This power can be used to build healthy relationships, but it can also be used to manipulate and deceive. To better understand this darker side of building trust, my colleagues and I turned to the corporate world – a […]