By Kirsty Lindsay, Assistant Professor in Physiotherapy, Northumbria University, Newcastle
In 2024, I flew on a microgravity, or zero G, parabolic flight with the European Space Agency (ESA). The aeroplane flew big arcs up and down in the sky. At the top of the arc I experienced 22 seconds of weightlessness, just like an astronaut.
On the flight were some of ESA’s newest astronauts, training on the Microgravity…
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By Harold Lovell, Senior Lecturer, Glaciology, University of Portsmouth
Mark Hardiman, Senior Lecturer, Quaternary Science, University of Portsmouth
Pelle Tejsner, External Lecturer, Institut for Kultur, Sprog & Historie, University of Greenland
After several quieter years, wildfires have returned to western Greenland.
Two recent fires have brought renewed attention to a landscape more typically associated with glaciers and melting ice sheets than flames. But when we visited the region in 2023 to investigate a series of unusual large wildfires that burned a few years earlier, local residents told us they would not…
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By Isabelle Kaiko, Postdoctoral Researcher in Neuropsychology, Leiden University
Ineke van der Ham, Professor of Technological Innovations in Neuropsychology, Leiden University
Judith Schomaker, Assistant Professor, Department of Health, Medical and Neuropsychology, Leiden University
Think about the last time you used your phone to find your way somewhere. What would happen if, halfway through the journey, the route instructions vanished or your phone battery died? You might find yourself starting to panic. But once you notice something familiar or are able to ask someone for directions, this will usually subside, and you can adapt.
For some people, though, this feeling of getting lost doesn’t go away. It can even occur when navigating their own home.
Some estimates suggest…
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By Francisco De Abreu Duarte, Full-time Assistant Professor, European University Institute
We are living in a world backed by technology that seems to have a spiritual project of its own. Are the fears of the Pope’s AI-critical encyclical founded?
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By Oscar Morton, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University of Sheffield
Chris Bousfield, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Cambridge
The minerals needed for clean energy are driving widespread forest loss across Africa, much of it far beyond the mine itself and largely preventable.
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By Rennie Naidoo, Professor of Information Systems, University of the Witwatersrand
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), and especially large language models deployed as chatbots and digital assistants, are now part of everyday digital life.
These models are being framed as a helpful assistant, a patient tutor, a customer service agent and even a source of emotional support. But what happens when even more human encounters are mediated by machines?
This question matters especially in South Africa, where apartheid not only…
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By Mwangi Chege, Lecturer, American University
More and more of Kenya’s farmlands are coming under the control of people who live and work in urban centres. Over the past two decades, the proportion they control has grown to nearly a third of Kenya’s total agricultural land.
This trend has also been recorded in Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. Urban residents acquire rural farmlands because they see land as an attractive investment.…
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By Johanna Amaya-Panche, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics, Liverpool John Moores University
Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo De La Espriella, widely known as “El Tigre”, will inherit a country deeply affected by insecurity.
The Paz Total (total peace) strategy of outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, leaves a difficult legacy. Dialogue with armed groups has
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By Siân Halcrow, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Otago
Rebecca Gowland, Professor of Bioarchaeology, Durham University
Trigger warning: this article includes references to infant death and institutional abuse
If you’ve been to a museum about the history of medicine or surgery you’ve probably seen loads of preserved human remains that have been used as teaching aids or in scientific research.
At London’s Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons you can see human tissue like the Evelyn tables from the 1600s. These display the dissected system of arteries, nerves and veins from an unknown adult, which were then pasted on four boards.
But it’s often not just adult…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp. © Instagram/Zaida Catalán; John Sharp The Democratic Republic of Congo’s High Military Court in Kinshasa, the capital, has convicted on appeal the Congolese army Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni of the war crime of murder for orchestrating the assassinations of Zaida Catalán and Michael J. Sharp. The United Nations experts were abducted and executed in March 2017 while investigating mass killings in Kasai Central province. The verdict announced on June 5 ends a trial chapter that began nine years ago before a military…
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