By Philip Broadbent, Wellcome Multimorbidity PhD Fellow & Public Health Registrar, University of Glasgow
It is tempting to tell a tidy story in which people in Britain take too many pills because they exercise too little and eat too poorly, while Danes stay slim by cycling everywhere. The assumption is that Britain relies on medication to fix lifestyle failures, whereas Denmark relies on prevention.
But are Britons actually more medicine-dependent than the Danes? The honest answer is yes and no.
When it comes to the more routine maintenance of getting older – managing the physical wear and tear of the body – the two countries prescribe…
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By Benjamin Redmond Roche, Visiting Research Fellow, Solar Radiation Management Research Governance & Independent Consultant, UCL
Solar geoengineering experiments are being funded, but researchers disagree over what they can tell us – and whether they should happen at all.
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By Tom Quilter, Artificial Intelligence Researcher, University of Manchester
On Saturday, Donald Trump said, “We’re leading China on AI… and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.” But the danger the world is waking up to is that this is a game both the US and China could lose, potentially fatally, with AI itself emerging as the winner.
Last week, Evan Hubinger, a researcher at Anthropic, warned that he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could…
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By John William Devine, Senior Lecturer in Ethics, Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Swansea University
Every year since the first Wimbledon Championship in 1877, a male player with a one-handed backhand has featured in the singles semi-finals of a grand slam. That 149 year streak ended at this year’s US Open when Stefanos Tsitsipas, the last remaining single-hander in the draw, exited the tournament in the round of 16.
This is a watershed moment for tennis, as it marks a break with the origins of the sport and the culmination of a five decades-long trend towards hitting the backhand with two hands on the racket.…
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By Mathieu Lajante, Associate Professor in Marketing, Toronto Metropolitan University
Advertising can turn our fears about aging, failure and belonging into reasons to buy, and repeated exposure can reshape what we see as a good life.
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By Ukachukwu Abaraogu, Senior Lecturer, Public Health, Evidence Synthesis & Rehabilitation, University of the West of Scotland
Chris Seenan, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Stirling
Regular scans help clinicians monitor small aneurysms, but patients describe recurring fears and confusion about what they can safely do.
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By Uisce Jordan, Research Associate, University of Glasgow
Parliament is back in session, and Andy Burnham is set to put his promise of becoming a “cost-of-living government” into practice. Since 2021, economic and geopolitical instability has led UK households to struggle with a fall in real disposable income and inflation, particularly around food and energy prices.
Families are under sustained pressure to meet essential costs. This pressure is likely to intensify as the US-Iran conflict and disruption around the…
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By Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor Popular Music and Media Studies, University of Alberta
Andrew deWaard, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego
Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian, University of Winnipeg
A recent survey of working musicians in Canada points to a growing discontent about AI in music, and points to how we could gain a music industry that allows Canadian music to flourish.
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By Sofia Borushkina, Researcher at The Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute; Monash University
Support settlements are now at the forefront of Russian federal spatial policy and they tell us a lot about how the land lies in Russia today.
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By Sam Power, Lecturer in Politics, University of Bristol
British politics looks set to be dominated in the coming weeks and months by the £72 million donated to Reform UK. This is because, and there’s really no other way to cut the cake here, this is an astonishing amount of money.
The donations to Reform came in the space of just one weekend – £36 million each from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Delo has ties to Hong Kong, while Harborne – whose self-confessed “competitive…
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