Category: Academic Analysis
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From potion to prescription: how witches’ herbs became medical marvels
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock As Halloween approaches, stories of witches and their potions resurface, often featuring eerie plants like belladonna, mandrake and mugwort. These botanicals, steeped in myth and folklore, have long been linked to spells and sorcery. Yet behind…
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From antibiotics to antimalarials: how repurposed drugs might keep cancer from returning
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University dturphoto/Shutterstock.com Many cancer survivors live with the worry that their cancer might come back. This “recurrence” occurs when cancer cells hide somewhere in the body – like in the bone marrow – and start…
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The five most terrifying songs ever recorded
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester zef art/Shutterstock As plastic skeletons enter the shops, pumpkin spice flavourings spread through coffee houses like Japanese knot-weed and jumpers are dug out of drawers, music fans’ playlists also begin to shift, with “spooky…
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A Different Class of social commentary: Pulp’s era-defining album turns 30
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester In the summer of 1995, an exceptional heat wave swept the country. The Usual Suspects delighted cinema-goers, and the British press engineered the so-called “battle of Britpop”. Music fans were urged to choose between…
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Netflix’s A House of Dynamite sounds the nuclear alarm, but how worried should we be?
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Lacy, Senior Lecturer, School of Global Affairs, Lancaster University As a teenager in the 1980s, I was shown a BBC drama in school called Threads that depicted the impact of a nuclear strike on a city in northern England. Threads is a brutal vision of…
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In drug trials, lack of oversight of research ethics boards could put Canadian patients at risk
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joel Lexchin, Associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; York University, Canada; University of Sydney Research ethics boards are supposed to ensure that, among other things, patients understand the nature of the research and have given informed consent. (Unsplash/Nappy) New drug approvals…
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How global cross-cultural folklore and legends shape the monsters we fear
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Amala Poli, PhD in English (Medical/ Health Humanities), Western University It’s that time of year again when you grab a tub of popcorn and settle in for a cozy evening with a familiar slasher film — a haunted house, a masked villain and the perfect jump…
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Why Canadians need two dramatic educational shifts to honour reconciliation
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jennifer Wallner, Associate Professor, School of Political Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa When speaking about Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mazina Giizhik — also known as Justice Murray Sinclair — often declared: “Education has gotten us into this mess, and education will get us out.” Sinclair…
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‘Hallucinated’ cases are affecting lawyers’ careers – they need to be trained to use AI
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Craig Smith, Lecturer in Law, University of Salford Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Generative artificial intelligence, which produces original content by drawing on large existing datasets, has been hailed as a revolutionary tool for lawyers. From drafting contracts to summarising case law, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Lexis+…
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How the first animals evolved – a new clue from a tiny relative
Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Max Telford, Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, UCL The next time you go wild swimming, whether in a lake, river or sea, you are probably sharing the water with one of your tiniest, yet closest relatives. This near-family member is a microscopic, single-celled organism…