By Daniel P. Aldrich, Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University
Four tornadoes tore across southwest Michigan in early March 2026, killing four people. They were the state’s deadliest natural hazards in decades.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance to cover uninsured and underinsured losses. FEMA said no. She appealed. FEMA said no…
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By Mark Hibbett, Head of Research Information Systems, University of the Arts London
Doctor Doom, Marvel comics’ greatest supervillain, is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) later this year in Avengers: Doomsday. As moviegoers will soon discover, he’s a megalomaniac dictator who believes his genius is the only way to save the world – and the evidence suggests he might be right.
Doom is going to be played by Robert Downey Jr, who previously helped launch the MCU as Iron Man. Fans have spent the past two years speculating how he can be both characters, with all…
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By Andrea Loux Jarman, Senior Lecturer in Law, Bournemouth University
In advance of the midterm elections, US states have been engaged in what US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has called, a “race to bottom” with an exercise known as “gerrymandering”.
What a gerrymander effectively does is move the boundaries of voting districts to concentrate groups of people who are likely to vote…
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By Yilei Yu, Senior Researcher and Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography, Rice University
Dylan Connor, Associate Professor of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University
James R. Elliott, Professor of Sociology, Rice University
If your home isn’t in a federally designated flood zone, flooding might seem like someone else’s problem. No one requires you to buy flood insurance, and the map suggests you’re in the clear. But reality may be very different.
Mounting evidence reveals that significantly more homes are at risk of flooding than is indicated by FEMA’s 100-year flood maps – about…
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By Anthony Kaziboni, Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA), University of Johannesburg
Going without piped water for weeks or even months has become a reality for many South Africans. The residents of Madibeng, meaning “place of water” in Setswana, in the country’s North West province, are no exception.
There are than half a million people living in the area who have had poor…
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By Giulio Lucarini, Senior Researcher, Institute of Heritage Science, National Research Council (CNR)
Federica Ugliano, Curator at Museo Egizio (Turin, Italy) and Research Affiliate, National Research Council (CNR)
Lorena Lombardi, Research Affiliate, National Research Council (CNR)
More than a century after they were excavated from beneath Cairo, almost 3,000 stone tools from Heliopolis show that specialised work was already reshaping village life before Egypt became a state.
Few places have a grander origin story than Heliopolis. It flourished thousands of years before the founding of Cairo, now Egypt’s capital and largest city. In pharaonic times Heliopolis was a major religious and intellectual centre, devoted to the cult of the sun god Ra. The ancient Egyptians believed…
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By Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork
Alex Waddan, Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy, University of Leicester
Trump has mentioned his predecessor Joe Biden 900 times in nine months. But voters are likely to blame him rather than his predecessor.
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By Alice Hunt, Associate Professor in History, University of Southampton
The royal tour of the Caribbean is the king’s first visit to this region of the Commonwealth as monarch. It comes at a time of protests and growing demands for slavery reparations, as well as an apology for the royal family’s historic role in the trade.
The visits will include two republics which do not recognise him as monarch – Guyana and Barbados – and the constitutional monarchies of the Bahamas and Barbados (though all are independent nations).
Against this backdrop, historian Anthony Seldon…
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By Caray A Walker, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Anglia Ruskin University
Melody Clark, Individual Merit Promotion Scientist, British Antarctic Survey
When we think about Antarctica, many people imagine penguins, seals and whales. However, the majority of Antarctica’s scientific wonders cannot be seen without a microscope. These microbial communities form the foundation of Antarctic ecosystems yet remain largely invisible to most visitors.
Recent research published in PNAS showed that some microbes living in Antarctic soils appear to exist nowhere else on Earth. This challenges scientists’ long-held belief that microbes are easily…
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By Alex Chepstow-Lusty, Research Associate, Geography, University of Sussex
Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland has been a dumping ground for soil, fertiliser and wastewater for centuries.
It is the largest body of freshwater in the British Isles and was once surrounded by extensive Atlantic woodlands – woodlands that covered almost all of Ireland between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago.
In recent research I carried out with my co-author – the late Julie…
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