By Kelly Baldwin Heid, PhD Candidate, Ecology, Biodiversity and Nature-based Solutions ICLEI Europe, University of Freiburg
Rita de Sousa e Silva, Assistant Professor, Ecology, Leiden University
When Olivia Besters began caring for the patch of soil beneath the chestnut tree outside her home in Freiburg, Germany, more than 35 years ago, biodiversity was not on her mind.
“It was the optics,” she told me. The ground was compacted and littered with trash and dog “legacies”. Besters simply wanted the space directly outside her front door to look nicer. “Everything else came much later,” she said. “Thirty-five years ago, no one talked about climate change or insect decline.”
Over time, one tree bed expanded into 36 across Besters’ neighbourhood of Herdern. So deep is…
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By Julie Wharton, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Education, University of Winchester
Inclusion has become one of the most prominent concepts in contemporary education policy in England. Its position at the centre of the Department for Education’s ambitions can be seen in recent guidance on the creation of “inclusion bases”, spaces that support pupils with additional needs, in mainstream schools.
It is also present in wider reforms designed to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send). These include guidance…
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By Tabitha Rowland, PhD in Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
In case you missed it, Rachel Cusk’s new novel Life of M has been the centre of heated online debate. Dubbed a “biogossip” (biography based on gossip) allegedly inspired by the actress Natalie Portman, the novel investigates fame, power and truth with a particular emphasis on storytelling.
Much of the discussion…
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By Human Rights Watch
A national cybercrime court in Mali on September 14 sentenced a prominent journalist, Abdramane Keïta, to two years in prison on bogus charges, in the military government’s latest attack on media freedom. Click to expand Image Abdramane Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), Bamako, Mali. © Private Security forces arrested Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), on June 9 in Bamako, Mali’s capital, days after he commented on a television program that the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at…
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By Candice Stewart
Deep-sea mining may generate sediment plumes, destroy habitats and reduce the biodiversity that cascades through the food chain, placing fisherfolk in the middle of an uncertain ocean economy.
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By Daria Dergacheva
Elections in Russia are a sham. Yet when someone appears genuinely committed to an anti-war agenda, many had seize that hope as a chance to change, including young TikTokers
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By Amnesty International
Since the last time I spoke with you, the situation has gotten worse. I have a lack of funds that is linked to many things [including] because I was beaten in the mine shaft. Because of the bad conditions [at the mine] I can’t work every day. I now work four times a week. I […] The post An artisanal miner on torture and ill treatment by Rwanda Backed M23 fighters appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
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By Justin Roberts, Professor of Nutritional Physiology, Anglia Ruskin University
Scroll through social media and you will soon encounter advice about living longer, from fasting plans and supplements to elaborate daily routines. Yet reaching an advanced age tells us little about how healthy or independent those later years will be.
Researchers often use the term healthspan for the years spent in good health, free from disability or chronic disease. In 2021, global life expectancy was 71.4 years, while healthy life expectancy was 61.9 years, according to the World…
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By Stacy Olive Jarvis, PhD Candidate in in Musicology, University of Birmingham
The notebook preserves something that composer-centred histories often miss: the musical work taking place around Mozart, in this case by a young woman.
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By Alessandro Di Nuovo, Director Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and Professor of Machine Intelligence, Sheffield Hallam University
Samuele Vinanzi, Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Sheffield Hallam University
In August 2026, an experiment using “frontier”, or cutting edge, artificial intelligence models went further than planned.
An AI agent (a system that performs tasks autonomously) fabricated online identities in order to pressurise a human to insert malicious computer code into software. The agents had been tasked with solving a cybersecurity challenge by human operators,…
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