In the week that saw the British press rightly condemning the use of Twitter to send violent threats to several women, the Home Office started to use the social media site to publicise operations to carry…
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A Japanese research team claims to have developed a pocket-sized device that reveals if your body is burning fat in real time by measuring the amount of acetone on the breath. The prototype device is aimed…
It was a key moment in the Cold War: 50 years ago, on August 5, 1963, US and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer space (but…
Why do some people get stuck in poverty? Most answers to this question start with the idea that external constraints trap people in poverty. These constraints could take the form of malfunctioning credit…
What propels us to notice when a place is badly littered or surprisingly clean? When abroad, why do we often make comparisons between well-swept cities and badly kept ones? Of course, there is the banal…
Uruguay is set to become the first country to legalise marijuana use, cultivation and possession following a century of often authoritarian prohibition laws across the globe. In a landmark vote on President…
Many people buy high-end, free-range and organic products in a bid to cut down on the amount of chemicals in their bodies. But chemicals can accumulate from a range of sources, and new research suggests…
The horrific neglect and subsequent death of Daniel Pelka at the hands of his mother and step-father raises a number of questions about safeguarding procedures and practice. We are told teachers were concerned…
When officials in the northern Chinese province of Hubei recently declared their dedication to cleaning up air pollution by giving up smoking, few were impressed by their grasp of the problem. But China…
Many, if not most, of us are now connected to the internet, and we have become familiar with it: we shop, we bank, we socialise online. The Internet of Things is not a different internet but refers to…
Somewhere around 2010, the concept of trolling arrived in the national consciousness with a flurry of news stories: the hateful tweet Tom Daley received about his father during the Olympics; the defacement…
One of the key issues behind the recent debate over UK airports is the unwieldy dominance of Heathrow, both within London and across the whole nation. But the little guys are fighting back. Using a variety…
We seem to be living in a new era of forensic investigation. Since the introduction of DNA profiling in the mid-1980s, the forensic landscape has been reshaped. The sterility of the crime scene and its…
Germany and the UK have ambitious clean energy policies. Both have set themselves national emission reduction targets beyond the European Union’s goal of 20% below emissions levels of 1990. Germany has…
Despite the use of virulent anti-Western rhetoric during the 2011-12 presidential campaign and the subsequent protests, Vladimir Putin has been careful not to push himself out on a limb from which it would…
Because of their location’s geology, Icelandic volcanoes are known to be directly connected to the Earth’s mantle. New research shows that a volcano in Costa Rica may have a direct connection to the mantle…
Recent days have seen a string of terrible road and rail accidents: train crashes in France, Spain and Switzerland, a coach crash in Italy and, without the same international publicity, the usual steady…
Why would thousands of people flock to Las Vegas, right in the middle of summer, when temperatures easily reach the high thirties, to shut themselves up in one of Sin City’s largest hotels without spending…
When the carbon price collapsed to below €3 in April this year, EU policymakers sought to prop up carbon prices by a deal that would delay the release of carbon allowances (known as “backloading”). This…
A campaign to prevent a downgrade of Lewisham Hospital in south-east London was given a significant boost after a high court judge ruled that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and others were acting beyond…
As a teenager I observed a strange phenomenon. On awakening from an unusually vivid dream, I would often find that the moon was full. And as the silvery light prevailed on subsequent nights, my nocturnal…
Tobacco doesn’t immediately conjure up ideas of fuel for cars and planes. But that’s precisely what a three-year, $4.8m project from the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-E PETRO (Plants Engineered to Replace…
The Russian state’s engagement with environmental concerns is complicated, carrying as it does a heavy legacy from Soviet times. From the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster (in what is Ukraine…
Whether your death is reported to the coroner or not depends hugely on where you live (or died) and whether you are a man or a woman, as does the verdict on the cause of your death. These were the preliminary…
On the flight home from World Youth Day in Brazil, Pope Francis gave an unscheduled, no-holds-barred interview to the journalists travelling with him. He spoke on a wide range of topics including the role…