By Thomas Lockwood, PhD Researcher in Politics, York St John University
Suella Braverman’s decision to defect to Reform UK is not just another blow to Kemi Badenoch’s attempt to stabilise the Conservatives after their 2024 defeat. It also changes what Reform is being judged…
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By Thom Wilcockson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Loughborough University
Ahmet Begde, Research Associate, Dementia, University of Oxford
Melody Pattison, Lecturer in Linguistics, Cardiff University
The earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language.
New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Pratchett is remembered as one…
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By Timothy Hearn, Lecturer, University of Cambridge; Anglia Ruskin University
An upside-down jellyfish drifts in a shallow lagoon, rhythmically contracting its translucent bell. By night that beat drops from roughly 36 pulses a minute to nearer 30, and the animal slips into a state that, despite its lack of a brain, resembles sleep.
Field cameras show it even takes a brief siesta around noon, to “catch up” after a disturbed night.
A new Nature Communications study has tracked these lulls in cassiopea…
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By Steven David Pickering, Honorary Professor, International Relations, Brunel University of London
Martin Ejnar Hansen, Reader in Political Science, Brunel University of London
Yosuke Sunahara, Professor in Public Administration, Kobe University
Academic freedom is often described as a cornerstone of democratic society. Politicians regularly claim to defend it, universities invoke it in mission statements and most members of the public say they support it in principle.
So why does it provoke such intense disagreement once it becomes concrete? At first glance, these disputes look like arguments about universities. But our research suggests something else is going on. Public disagreements over academic freedom are not simply about campus policy. They reflect deeper divides…
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By Lucyl Harrison, PhD Candidate, School of Humanities, University of Hull
The year is 1926. Queen Elizabeth II is christened. Wage cuts and increased working hours for coal miners precipitate a general strike of workers. A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. The League of Nations accepts Germany as the sixth permanent member on the council deeming it a “peace-loving country”.
It is also the year that Virginia Woolf published her essay, On Being Ill, in…
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By Carolina Are, LSE Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science
My social media feed has been full of Brooklyn Beckham memes. That is, since January 19, when David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son posted a series of Instagram stories criticising his parents, their curated public personas and what he described as long-standing slights towards him and his wife, actress Nicola Peltz.
As a researcher of online harms and freedom of speech, I’m less interested in whether the memes are funny than in what Brooklyn Beckham versus brand Beckham tells us about how social…
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By Alex Dryden, PhD Candidate in Economics, SOAS, University of London
When a Danish pension fund recently announced it would sell its US$100 million (£74 million) holding of US government bonds, the move was tiny in financial terms – just a drop in a US$30 trillion ocean. But it touched on a much bigger issue. Foreign investors now hold around one-third of all US government debt, amounting to roughly US$9.5 trillion.
Of these foreign holdings, Europe has US$3.6 trillion,…
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By Catherine Meads, Professor of Health, Anglia Ruskin University
New census-linked data reveals a stark UK health inequality: sexual minority people die younger and at higher rates than heterosexual people.
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By Sophus zu Ermgassen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Nature Finance, University of Oxford
Global leaders have committed to halting and reversing the ongoing degradation of nature within the next few decades. But with tight public budgets, governments around the world are looking towards nature markets as one way to attract more private investment into nature.
Nature markets are systems for measuring an ecological improvement on some land, then creating a representation of that improvement as a credit, which can then be bought and sold. In theory, they allow governments to attract more private…
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By Juan Alfonso Revenga Frauca, Profesor asociado de nutrición humana y dietética, Universidad San Jorge
José Miguel Soriano del Castillo, Catedrático de Nutrición y Bromatología del Departamento de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Universitat de València
The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) for 2025-2030 have caused significant controversy, with polarised opinions between their supporters and detractors. They are disruptive, to say the least, both in how they are presented and the recommendations they make.
But little has been said about the fact that, for the first time since 1980, after nine editions in 45 years, the standard scientific procedure for preparing them has been completely bypassed.
The most striking thing about the 2025-2030 GDAs is their graphic…
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