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Neowise: an increasingly rare opportunity to spot a comet with the naked eye
Neowise seen from the International Space Station. NASA Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it has a relatively long orbital period, meaning it was only discovered aContinue Reading
Four things that can bias how teachers assess student work
stockfour/Shutterstock The way that teachers assess students has been under scrutiny since the UK government announced that this would be one element of a range of evidence used to replace GCSE and A Level exams this year. Teacher assessment is a key part of university study, too. University educators playContinue Reading
Herd immunity: why the figure is always a bit vague
hobbit/Shutterstock Nearly 100 years ago, two British researchers, William Topley and Graham Wilson, were experimenting with bacterial infections in mice. They noticed that individual survival depended on how many of the mice were vaccinated. So the role of the immunity of an individual needed to be distinguished from the immunityContinue Reading
Mauritania: A racial pyramid seemingly resistant to change · Global Voices
The country remains divided by skin colour Photo of a traditional wedding in Atar in Mauritania by Radosław Botev, in free use on Wikipedia In ethnically diverse Mauritania, the government appears to have turned deaf ears to the demands of the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, continuing policies which reproduce systemicContinue Reading
Shamima Begum: what the legal ruling about her return to the UK actually means
Shamima Begum, who left the UK as a 15-year-old schoolgirl for Syria in 2015, should be allowed back so that she can effectively challenge the removal of her British citizenship, the Court of Appeal ruled on July 16. The decision – which the Home Office announced it would appeal –Continue Reading
High-intensity workouts may put regular gym goers at risk of rhabdomyolysis, a rare but dangerous condition
Those most at risk are male, non-elite, regular exercisers with a body mass index of over 30. Daxiao Productions/ Shutterstock If you’re a gym regular, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of achey or sore muscles a day or two after overdoing it slightly during your workout. But while thisContinue Reading
New dinosaur discovery in Switzerland fills a gap in evolutionary history of sauropods
_Schleitheimia_ (left) and _Plateosaurus_ (above right). University of Utrecht, Author provided Dinosaurs were the dominant group of animals on Earth for over 150 million years. Long-necked, plant-eating sauropods such as Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus are probably among the most famous dinosaurs, in part thanks to their huge size and strangeContinue Reading
How smugglers are shifting staggering amounts of contraband despite the pandemic
On July 1, Italian police made the largest amphetamine seizure in the world. At the port of Salerno, just south of Naples, they used chainsaws to open large cylinders of paper and industrial machinery that were inside shipping containers from Syria and found 14 tonnes of pills. In Hong Kong,Continue Reading
In Georgia, cinema is the latest flashpoint in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights · Global Voices
Screenshot from the trailer of the “And then we danced” movie by Levan Akin, showing the main character Merab. Image via Music Box Films’ December 2019 YouTube video. A 2019 film about the story of an LGBT dancer continues to strongly polarise Georgian society. “And then we danced,” filmed inContinue Reading
Coronavirus: how lockdown exposed food insecurity in a small Bangladeshi city
The food market in Mongla in October 2019: it was shut during the COVID-19 lockdown. Hanna Ruszczyk, Author provided The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as far more than a health crisis for the world’s poor and marginalised, exposing faultlines in food systems around the world. The UN’s World Food ProgrammeContinue Reading