Science and Society
In late July 2022 French president Emmanuel Macron concluded a tour of Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau. And he visits Algeria between 25 and 27 August.
At first glance, his choice of countries is difficult to understand. Three former French colonies – Cameroon, Benin and Algeria – and a former Portuguese colony, Guinea-Bissau, seem very different.
Nevertheless, taken together, Macron’s visits tell a story in which France is doing penance for its colonial crimes while simultaneously trying to maintain the influence it gained through colonialism.
These two themes also emerged at the New…
Poor students in cities are a lot more likely to get into top universities, and that is because schools have created 'urban escalators' which leave rural students on the margins.
That is not to say that rural students go to university less, they go more, it is just that elite schools and governments prefer urban-centered policy interventions and the targeting of university and third-sector outreach activities to urban areas.
Researchers from the University of Bath analysed data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) of 800,000 English students beginning university in the academic…
The UK's first national lockdown in March 2020 created a massive shift in consumer habits from which it will take years to recover.
A new study from the universities of Cambridge and Newcastle used an approach normally used to estimate cumulative excess deaths and found this new mortality was among UK retailers and restaurants.
To compare retail, hospitality and online sales in the UK between March and August 2020 with average figures for the same months for the years 2010-2019. Their economic models suggest that shops predominantly selling food, such as supermarkets, saw a 5-10% bump in…
Benedictus, Benedicat, per Jesum Christum, Dominum Nostrum. Amen.
Please be seated. It’s dinner time in St Paul’s College, Sydney, where I’m dean and head of house at Graduate House. The members of the High Table, wearing academic gowns, have processed into the refectory to a table laden with candelabra and silver accoutrements from the college treasury, each place set with cutlery and glasses. The students, also in gowns, rise from their seats to acknowledge the High Table, and stand until the presider has finished the Latin grace (this is the shorter one – a longer version is kept for…
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we have found ourselves in the middle of a nostalgia frenzy. It seemed to permeate everything: nostalgia playlists on music streaming platforms outperformed new music, and old albums by Madonna, Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey topped the iTunes charts. On TV, we’ve been treated to memorable football matches, Wimbledon finals and favourite dramas as broadcasters played their part in providing comfort television.
Most notably perhaps, has been the huge surge in nostalgic hobbies such as knitting, crochet and DIY fashion, an ongoing obsession with baking bread…
An Open Letter to AAAS Science Magazine from members of the SeTA (Science and Technology for Agriculture, www.setanet.it) network.
***
In a recent letter to Science, Peng et al. (2020)[1] argue that the USA and the European Union (EU) should enact a total ban on glyphosate on the grounds that it causes “a cascade of neuro-endocrine disruption to the development, physiology, and behaviour of honeybees” and that “some evidence has indicated that glyphosate could promote (sic) cancer in humans”. Consequently, they call for “natural and ecological weedkilling alternatives and less intensive…
Activity means different things to men and women in Finland, but there is one thing they share in common; television has little impact.
A recent longitudinal study with a ten-year follow-up examined how the television viewing time of Finnish adults was associated with their physical activity level during leisure-time. It found that active men spend more time watching television than less active men do, while the opposite is true for women. What accounts for that? A more traditional country, where education is done by rote and teachers are the best people rather than having their place…
When Charles Dickens died, he had spectacular fame, great wealth and an adoring public. But his personal life was complicated. Separated from his wife and living in a huge country mansion in Kent, the novelist was in the thrall of his young mistress, Ellen Ternan. This is the untold story of Charles Dickens’s final hours and the furore that followed, as the great writer’s family and friends fought over his final wishes.
My new research has uncovered the never-before-explored areas of the great author’s sudden death, and his subsequent burial. While details such as the presence of Ternan at…
Nationalist politics continue to gain support across the European continent, from the UK to Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, the concept of “Europe” has become a rallying cry for those who want to resist what they see as a constraining, inadequate or conservative vision for the future.
Whatever else such a political picture may call to mind, it’s also a description of the state of philosophy across Europe in the early 19th century. During the 1830s and 1840s, nationalism and Europeanism stood for two sides in a struggle over the identity of philosophy itself. For the…
More kids in Germany are getting prescriptions for psychotropic drugs than ever before, according to the results of a new study.
On the basis of nationwide statutory health insurance data, the authors analyzed prescribing rates and rates of new prescriptions, as well as the groups of doctors who issued the initial prescriptions for psychotropic drugs in 5 million children and adolescents. Herbal or homeopathic medicines were not included.
The prevalence of psychotropic drug use rose from 19.6 per 1000 children and adolescents in 2004 to 27.1/1000 in 2012. Notable increases were seen for…
The European Journal of Psychotraumatology has mandated sex and gender data for all papers before they will be published. Editor-in-Chief Miranda Olff and Shirin Heidari, a member of the European Association of Science Editors’ Gender Policy Committee, drafted the new guidelines they believe will have significant implications for the collective understanding of sex and gender-based differences in mental health research, and eventually impact treatment plans – both in terms of medication prescribed and psychotherapeutic approaches taken.
Every article published in EJPT must now:
disclose the…
American social psychologists and partisan science journalists talk so much about how they are superior to conservatives it is almost like they believe American conservatives are a separate species. And they may be, because conservatives seem to be much happier than liberals.
A new paper analyzed conservatives in Europe and found they are less polarized - but like everyone else life satisfaction depends on the overall political climate they live in and on social belonging. Conservatives and liberals alike want diversity, as long as they are in the overwhelming majority.
Dr. Olga Stavrova…