Category: Academic Analysis
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Trick or treatment: Halloween health hazards hiding in plain fright
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University yurakrasil/Shutterstock.com While Halloween offers a chance to embrace all things spooky and supernatural, the real terrors this season aren’t confined to ghost stories. From pumpkin-carved fingers to contact lens infections that can lead to life-threatening heart conditions, the festivities…
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Women folk healers were branded as witches, but their treatments may have been medically sound
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster AlexShevchenko78/Shutterstock “Hubble bubble toil and trouble” is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that conjures images of evil witches making potions in giant cauldrons. But the truth was that women persecuted as witches were probably legitimate healers of the…
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Special educational needs reform could be a bureaucratic nightmare – here’s how to put families first
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paty Paliokosta, Associate Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Kingston University PeopleImages/Shutterstock Plans to reform support for children with special educational needs in England have been delayed after the government announced its new policy would not be unveiled until 2026, rather than autumn 2025. However, there…
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Plastic packaging could be a greater sin than food waste
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Cronin, Professor in Marketing and Consumer Culture Studies, Lancaster University Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock Food waste has long been reviled as an immoral, largely preventable feature of our consumer society. An estimated 4.7 million tonnes of edible food is thrown away by households each year in the…
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The Scottish king who wrote a treatise on demonology and obssessed over witches
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation Suspected witches kneeling before James VI in Daemonologie, his 1597 treatise on witches. Wikimedia Commons In the 16th century, witches and demons weren’t just for Halloween. People were terrified and preoccupied with them – even kings. In…
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The Rose Field takes Philip Pullman’s ‘Dust’ to its philosophical conclusions
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel Jesse Cox, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in English Literature, University of Tübingen The Rose Field, the third and final volume in Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust trilogy is finally in the hands of his readers. This trilogy accompanies Pullman’s earlier series, His Dark…
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Where did the first people come from? The case for a coastal migration from southern Africa
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Alan Whitfield, Emeritus Chief Scientist, NRF-SAIAB, National Research Foundation The origins and migrations of modern humans around the world are a hot topic of debate. Genetic analyses have pointed to Africa as the continent from which our ancestors dispersed in the Late Pleistocene epoch, which…
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Some animals are more equal than others: the dark side of researching popular species
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Laura Tensen, Assistant Professor, University of Greifswald Biologists often form deep bonds with the species they study. For some, that relationship begins early in their careers and shapes decades of research. The connection can be personal, even affectionate, but it can also create tensions when…
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Trump and Putin didn’t hold new peace talks after all — but that was likely Putin’s plan all along
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Oleksa Drachewych, Assistant Professor in History, Western University Donald Trump’s administration recently announced a forthcoming meeting between the American president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to take place in Hungary. High-level talks from representatives of both the United States and Russia were to set up such…
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Atorvastatin recall may affect hundreds of thousands of patients – and reflects FDA’s troubles inspecting medicines manufactured overseas
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By C. Michael White, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut Several batches of the drug did not dissolve properly, which means the person taking them would receive a lower dose. Chimperil59/iStock via Getty Images If you take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, you may have…