Bumblebees are better at flying in wet conditions than other bees Simona Chira/Shutterstock This year will be remembered in the UK for its extremely heavy downpours. Intense summer storms resulted in some places exceeding twice their average rainfall. These wet summers make life even harder for bees, who are alreadyContinue Reading
Zoomik/Shutterstock The world’s most sophisticated commercially available spyware may be being abused, according to an investigation by 17 media organisations in ten countries. Intelligence leaks and forensic phone analysis suggests the surveillance software, called Pegasus, has been used to target and spy on the phones of human rights activists, investigativeContinue Reading
8H/Shutterstock Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that analyse samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to determine which forms of microscopic life exist inContinue Reading
During the pandemic, the pejorative term “snake-oil salesman” has been bandied about a lot. It’s been used, perhaps with a tinge of 1980s nostalgia, to describe convicted fraudster and serial opportunist Jim Bakker, whose colloidal Silver Solution required only some deft rebranding to become a specific curative for COVID-19. ForContinue Reading
Pavel Chagochkin/Shutterstock Military planning is a complicated endeavour, calling upon experts in logistics and infrastructure to predict resource availability and technological advancements. Long-range military planning, deciding what to invest in now to prepare armed forces for the world in thirty years’ time, is even more difficult. One of the mostContinue Reading
Everything I Do/Shutterstock Counting feels utterly effortless to adults, who are unlikely to even remember when or how they picked up this useful, apparently automatic skill. Yet when you think about it, counting is a remarkable invention. It helped early humans to trade, apportion food and organise fledgling civilisations, layingContinue Reading
Astrocytes: these cells could be part of the key to unlocking the mystery of how brains change their structure. Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock The Conversation Weekly podcast is taking a short break in August. For the next few weeks we’re bringing you extended versions of some our favourite interviews from the pastContinue Reading
Dear Editor, I was disappointed to read the letter from ‘Dick Jameson’ concerning the radio station where I volunteer, with its inaccurate depiction of East Devon Radio. To pick up the points raised… The recent name change was quite deliberate in that we wanted listeners in the wider community whoContinue Reading
Every year, on the first Sunday in August, the replica of an 11th-century Viking longboat sails up the river Ulla to the town of Catoira in northern Spain. The boat, manned by townsfolk disguised as Viking warriors, stages a ferocious onslaught on the town which is successfully fended off byContinue Reading
We know very little about the human brain. Orla/Shutterstock Consciousness is arguably the most important scientific topic there is. Without consciousness, there would after all be no science. But while we all know what it is like to be conscious – meaning that we have personal awareness and respond toContinue Reading
