Category: The Conversation

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology, UCL Wasps get a hankering for jam once the colony larvae pupate. victoras/Shutterstock It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and that means sun, sea – and wasps. A lot of us have been taught to fear wasps as aggressive insects…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Una Cunningham, Professor emerita, Department of Teaching and Learning, Stockholm University fizkes/Shutterstock Every year, millions of students from all parts of the globe study for a degree through a language other than their first, usually English. In 2023, 25% of all higher education students in the…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Forshaw, Professor of Health Psychology, Edge Hill University There was a time, just a couple of decades ago, when researchers in psychology and health always had to engage with people face-to-face or using the telephone. The worst case scenario was sending questionnaire packs out to…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Urban Wiesing, Professor of Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen The US Food and Drug Administration recently convened a panel of experts to examine a sensitive and increasingly urgent question: should antidepressants be prescribed to women suffering from depression during pregnancy? To the surprise…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Franklin Nobrega, Associate Professor, Microbiology, University of Southampton Phages (red) attacking a bacterium (green). nobeastsofierce/Shutterstock.com If bacteria had a list of things to fear, phages would be at the top. These viruses are built to find, infect and kill them – and they have been doing…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adrián Carballo Casla, Postdoctoral Researcher in Geriatric Epidemiology, Karolinska Institutet Studio Romantic/Shutterstock Imagine two people in their 70s. Both are active, live independently and enjoy life. But over the next 15 years, one of them develops two or three chronic illnesses – heart disease, diabetes, depression…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mathelinda Nabugodi, Lecturer in Comparative Literature, UCL Portrait of Madeleine by Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1800). Louvre According to one strand of history, slavery was abolished when Europeans found their conscience. According to another, it was abolished when it stopped being profitable. Both approaches tend to underplay the…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yvonne Reddick, Reader in English Literature and Creative Writing, University of Lancashire “Far over the misty mountains cold,” Dad read. Every evening before my light was turned out, he read me a story about a hobbit who left his comfortable burrow to journey to the Lonely…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation For the past few weeks the headlines about Gaza have focused on the hundreds of people who have been killed while queueing for food. The aid distribution system put in place in May, backed by the…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Georgia MacMillan, PhD Scholar – Research Ireland Employment Based Scheme, University of Galway Without a view of the stars at night, Don McLean would never have been able to write Vincent and Vincent van Gogh would not have painted Starry Night. Viewing a sky full of…