By Matthew Addicoat, Senior Lecturer in Functional Materials, Nottingham Trent University
The 2026 Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to two researchers for their work on mirror-image molecules.
Frances’s Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kensō Soai were announced as this year’s winners during a news conference in Stockholm.
Some molecules, like amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in living beings, exist in two forms that are each other’s mirror-image – like our left and right hands. Molecules that are mirror-image in this way are described as chiral, which…
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By Kamran Khan, Associate Professor of Language, Social Justice and Education, School of Education, University of Birmingham
The Holborn and St Pancras byelection takes place on October 8, in the London constituency vacated by former prime minister Keir Starmer. Labour might be hopeful of holding the seat, but the leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski is also on the ballot paper.
During his campaign, Polanski addressed voters in English and in Urdu in a social media video. Last…
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By Scott DeJong, PhD Communication Studies, Concordia University
If the White House wanted to teach the public about ongoing social issues, it could have built video games for its website that consider the various challenges surrounding those issues.
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By Moses Chitete, Agricultural Economist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Agricultural Research and Development, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources
A super El Niño could spell disaster for southern Africa’s bean farmers. Better seeds, water storage and early warnings could help protect the next harvest.
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By Anmar Pretorius, Professor of Economics, North-West University
Mariëtte Geyser, Senior Lecturer in Agricultural Economics, North-West University
The super El Niño could push up South African maize prices, but large grain stocks will help limit price rises.
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By Adrià San José Plana, Recognised Researcher Earth Sciences - Global Health Resilience, Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS); Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Xavier Rodo, ICREA Research Professor, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Climate does more than shape the weather. It can influence when and where infectious diseases emerge by changing how disease-carrying vectors and animal hosts survive and behave. Scientists use weather data to anticipate some disease risks days or weeks ahead. But forecasting how those risks will change across seasons and years remains difficult. We asked Adrià San José Plana, a researcher in infectious disease modelling, and Xavier Rodó, a research professor and founding director of the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences in Barcelona, about their recent research.
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By Clara Bueno Lopez, DPhil Candidate, Neurodegenerative Disorders, University of Oxford
Why do smokers get Parkinson’s less often? New evidence from half a million adults in China points to carbon monoxide, not smoking itself.
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image A woman holds a sign reading "We demand due process for the innocent. No to injustice" during a protest against the state of emergency imposed by the government since March 2022, in San Salvador, El Salvador, on March 24, 2026. © 2026 AFP via Getty Images (Washington, DC) – Since early 2026, Salvadoran courts have begun convicting people in mass trials of hundreds of defendants at a time, relying on weak evidence and giving them no real chance to defend themselves, Human Rights Watch said today. For months, courts in El Salvador have held mass trials of…
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By Jillian C. York
If the Arab Spring was defined by optimism about what the internet could do, the years since have been marked by a more sober understanding of what it takes to defend it
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By Shirleene Robinson, Visiting Fellow, School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney
Noah Riseman, Adjunct Professor, Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University
The apology, along with the news that personnel and veterans can apply to have historical homosexual convictions extinguished from their records, are an overdue step in a long journey
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