Irina Polonina/Shutterstock Although babies and young children are at lower risk of getting very sick with COVID-19 compared to older adults, a small proportion of babies will require hospital care. There has been immense interest among scientists, health-care workers and new mothers especially in understanding whether potentially protective antibodies againstContinue Reading
Nasa / Unsplash, CC BY-NC As space travel for recreational purposes is becoming a very real possibility, there could come a time when we are travelling to other planets for holidays, or perhaps even to live. Commercial space company Blue Origin has already started sending paying customers on sub-orbital flights.Continue Reading
Our sense of touch is actually lots of different senses rolled into one. Yevhen Prozhyrko/Shutterstock Six prize announcements later, 12 men and one woman from 11 countries are now settling down to their new lives as Nobel laureates. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we delve into the scientificContinue Reading
This year’s COP26 climate conference is the most important since 2015 and the Paris Agreement. Here’s what you need to knowContinue Reading
Turning down the heating just 1C in a room can produce significant savings, our energy expert says. Syda Productions/Shutterstock The price of gas and electricity has been increasing sharply on the back of energy shortages. This is mainly due to a squeeze on gas supplies at a time when manufacturing,Continue Reading
Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory When the Nobel Prize-winning US physicist Robert Hofstadter and his team fired highly energetic electrons at a small vial of hydrogen at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1956, they opened the door to a new era of physics. UntilContinue Reading
taffpixture/Shutterstock Lava was still flowing on the surface of the Moon 1.97 billion years ago – and now we have the rocks to prove it. This is the result of new work from an international collaboration of planetary scientists, of which we’re a part, published in the journal Science. TogetherContinue Reading
Courtship behaviour of a male and female hippopotamus in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, showing the larger head and tusk sizes of the adult male on left. Graeme Shannon, Author provided Male hippopotamuses are an unusual size. Among mammals, males are usually much larger than females, but in hippos the sexesContinue Reading
When I recently explained why teaching grammar in primary school still matters, Radio 4’s Today programme invited me to debate the importance of standard English. My opponent was Nevile Gwynne, a British private tutor, author and, as presenter Nick Robinson put it, a “stickler for the right sort of grammar”.Continue Reading
Scientists are still puzzling over the mystery of what makes us conscious. Lidiia/Shutterstock What’s happening in our brains to create consciousness? In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we hear from two scientists uncovering clues to this mystery that could help people with severe brain injuries to recover. AndContinue Reading
