Founded in 1583, the University of Edinburgh is one of the world’s top universities. It is globally recognised for its research, development and high-quality teaching, attracting some of the world’s leading thinkers to work and study. The University is one of the UK’s top five universities for research and its academics’ research achievements have global implications. Its scientists created Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be genetically cloned from an adult cell. The University developed the first genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine, pioneered the first automated industrial assembly robot, and devised technology used in today’s smartphones. It is working towards many more historic firsts. With one of the most diverse populations of any Scottish University, two thirds of the world’s nationalities are represented in a student body of more than 31,000.
Two people are dead and five injured – including the suspected perpetrator – in what has been described as a cynical act of terror against Denmark. Though they may have resulted in fewer deaths, the twin…
Fulani of northern Nigeria: well aware of the problem.
Fulani by Attila Jandi/Shutterstock
For millions of livestock owners across Africa, a disease in the herd can mean hardship or even ruin. Access to effective veterinary treatment is therefore essential for many people’s livelihoods. Many…
Behold the biggest animal to have ever lived.
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum in London is replacing its skeleton of the long-necked dinosaur Diplodocus – an iconic denizen of the main entrance hall for nearly four decades – with a blue whale skeleton…
Up from the depths… a narcosub captured in Equador.
US DEA
It will come as no surprise to anyone that drugs are big business, so when a drone crashed in a car park of a US border town weighed down with several kilos of narcotics, it was just another example of…
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs set off an intense heat wave that briefly boiled the Earth’s atmosphere – but it didn’t burn off all the plants. Humanity has not been unlucky enough to observe…
All that research has made Tom a dull boy.
BBC/Company Productions Ltd
In his biography of Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd audaciously asks us to imagine pre-Reformation London as the street markets of Marrakesh. Cheapside would have been a bustling surge of traders and customers…
Time to take a chance on the European model?
De rödgröna/Wikimedia Commons
Don’t tell them this, but UKIP are the most European party out there. Britain’s democracy is increasingly diverse and complex, and with the growth of UKIP on the right and the Greens on the left its political…
Abandon hope? The former Abu Ghraib prison.
EPA/Khampha Bouaphanh
Ever since the US Senate’s devastating report into the CIA interrogation practices, which concluded the agency’s conduct amounted to torture, the debate over how to punish those responsible has gone unanswered…
France has had a long and troubled relationship with its Muslim populations. French armies faced down Muslim leaders during the expansion of the country’s empire in Africa in the 19th century. And in the…
Introducing Dearcmhara shawcrossi, the dino-fish that all the fuss is about.
Todd Marshall
My colleagues and I recently had the great privilege to announce a remarkable new discovery: a dolphin-like reptile that prowled the Middle Jurassic waters 170 million years ago. When you think of scientists…
Is Daisy doomed to a life indoors?
Tanathip Rattanatum
The dairy sector in the UK is going through a period of high uncertainty. Not only are suppliers having to cope with retail price wars and the fact that milk prices are being reduced by the increasing…
Hurrah! But wait till you get to the office.
aluedt
The expansion of higher education in the UK has been driven by a political desire to increase economic growth and to promote social mobility at the same time by drawing more graduates from a larger pool…
The new proposals for extending more powers to Scotland by the Smith Commission are radical: devolving extensive tax and welfare powers will make Scotland one of the most autonomous regions in western…
Weight on young shoulders.
Boy on scales via Igor Stepovik Shutterstock
The World Health Organisation has defined obesity in children as a major threat to public health and the UK government treats it as a high priority. While we know a lot about the problem of childhood obesity…
Not who you want stopping you on the street.
Danny Lawson/PA
Here’s a figure that deserves some attention: in the first year in which Scotland had a single police force, 8,000 stop searches were carried out by armed response officers, an average of 29 searches by…
Do recessions turn us into hungry bears?
ArtofLightPro
Poverty is associated with a great number of health problems. One relatively recent health crisis largely attributed to poverty is obesity. According to the World Health Organisation, obesity rates have…
Note: this article has spoilers. In Interstellar’s near-ish future, our climate has failed catastrophically, crops die in vast blights and America is a barely-habitable dustbowl. Little education beyond…
Helping hands.
Mother and child via Nadezhda1906/Shutterstock
Improve the school results of children from poor backgrounds and they will escape poverty in adulthood. This is the way the UK government believes it can alleviate child poverty, built on a belief in the…
Under control: sleeping sickness.
Christine Amongi Acup
The current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa (and perhaps elsewhere) and now Marburg Fever, a related a hemorrhagic fever virus in Uganda, has generated much talk about the collective “failures” to pre-empt…
Here we go again: protesters in Ouagadougou.
EPA/STR
Burkina Faso has suddenly grabbed the world’s attention with a remarkable popular uprising, in which hundreds of thousands of Burkinabé have forced the resignation of long-serving president Blaise Compaor…
Professor of International Child Protection Research and Director of Data at the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute , The University of Edinburgh
Chancellor's Fellow, Deanery of Molecular, Genetic and Population Health Sciences Usher Institute Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, The University of Edinburgh