By Leanne Snyder, Assistant Professor of Exercise Science, Loyola University Chicago
Every March, millions of Americans fill out brackets and tune in to watch the NCAA college basketball tournaments known as March Madness. The men’s and women’s competitions unfold in parallel, each with their own brackets, champions, storylines and fan bases.
The separation reflects one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in sports: that women…
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By Philip Howell, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge
Pets play an important role in many people’s lives. In the UK, six out of ten households have at least one pet, dogs being our most common companions (assuming we don’t count fish individually). But it isn’t easy to be precise.
The 2025 figure of 13.5 million pet dogs has recently been bumped up to correct for a significant undercounting in previous UK estimates. This compares with around
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By David Kroll, Professor of Natural Products Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
A Denver food and cannabis investigator became suspicious of PolkaDot-branded chocolate bars sitting next to convenience store energy shots and nicotine pouches in January 2026.
Months earlier, California public health officials warned about PolkaDot-branded chocolate bars. California authorities destroyed more than US$3 million of the chocolate after laboratory testing revealed added synthetic…
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By Lotanna Emediegwu, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University
Geopolitical tensions rarely stay confined to the battlefield. They ripple through global markets – particularly energy and food. The war between the US, Israel and Iran is a reminder of how quickly conflict can affect food security far beyond the region.
One of the most consequential developments of this conflict has been the disruption of shipping through the strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes.
Iran has also targeted energy…
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By Chris Macdonald, Lab Director and Fellow, University of Cambridge
Emerging technologies such as lab-based meat could produce the same quality and quantity of protein on hundreds of times less land.
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By Dannell D. Boatman, Assistant Professor and Health Communication Researcher, West Virginia University
False claims that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines cause cancer could, ironically, lead to worse cancer outcomes by undermining a promising tool to prevent and treat it.
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By J. Carson Meredith, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Jie Wu, an engineering graduate student, was studying a type of striking white beetle found in Southeast Asia and attempting to figure out how to mimic its brilliant color when an unexpected discovery upended the experiment.
Jie and I had been hoping to identify naturally occurring whitening pigments that could be used in paper and paints. The beetle’s white exoskeleton is made from a compound called chitin, which is a type of carbohydrate – one that is also commonly found in crab and lobster…
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By Matthew Bunn, Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security and Foreign Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
The war in Iran has cut off diplomatic efforts to limit the country’s development of nuclear weapons. Securing that material and equipment in other ways would be difficult and dangerous.
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By Gayle Rogers, Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh
It’s a familiar feeling: You start a text message, and your phone’s auto-complete function suggests several choices for the next word, ranging from banal to hilarious. “I love…” you, or coffee? Or you’re finishing an email, and merely typing the word “Let” prompts your app to suggest “Let me know if you have any questions” in light gray text.
Predictive language technologies have become so routine – baked into smartphones, email services and chatbots – that…
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By Amy McAuliffe, Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Practice, University of Notre Dame
Canadians are openly discussing the merits and risks of pursuing a nuclear weapon. Europeans are similarly considering a nuclear deterrent for the bloc. In South Korea, public support for a nuclear weapon is at its highest level on record, and even in Japan some politicians are
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