Category: The Conversation

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University The Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork for a possible military escalation against Latin American drug traffickers. Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock At the start of September 2025, US president Donald Trump sent a naval task force into…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lala Rukh, PhD Candidate, Energy, University of Galway P Stock/Shutterstock After comparing electricity tariffs on a spreadsheet, I can confirm that deciphering the plans feels a bit like learning ancient Greek. As part of my doctoral research, I decided to explore smarter electricity plans (those that…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Griffin, Professor in Materials Chemistry, Lancaster University Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering a new form of molecular architecture: crystals that contain large cavities. Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Japan, Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne, Australia,…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Christopher Watson, Professor, Astrophysics Research Centre, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast Nasa animation depicting the first 5,000 exoplanets to have been discovered, up to March 2022. M. Russo and A. Santaguida/Nasa-JPL On October 6 1995, at a scientific meeting in Florence, Italy,…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcus Blagrove, Senior Lecturer in Intregrative Virology, University of Liverpool Thammanoon Khamchalee/Shutterstock.com Scientists have found eggs of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in the UK for the first time – a mosquito that spreads many tropical diseases. The eggs were recently discovered in a trap at a…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas Gift, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre on US Politics, UCL The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, recently declared that he “doesn’t give a shit” if the Trump administration’s strike on a suspected Venezuelan gang boat is called a “war crime”. In a speech to…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Fox, Senior Lecturer in Police Studies, University of Portsmouth Ceri Breeze/Shutterstock As a researcher of police occupational culture, I was horrified, but not at all surprised by the recent Panorama programme in which an undercover reporter exposed sexism, racism and general thuggishness among some Metropolitan…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alison Habens, Head of Creative Writing, University of Portsmouth Apollo and Daphne by John William Waterhouse (1908). Wiki Commons The story of Apollo and Daphne was written around the year zero by Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Ovid was a trainee lawyer and student of…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Gater, Research Assistant at the Centre for Adult Social Care Research, Cardiff University For years we’ve been warned that technological advances and artificial intelligence (AI) are set to sweep people out of work. But when we think about whose jobs are really under threat, the…

Source: ForeignAffairs4 Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Terrell Nield, Senior Lecturer, Bioscience, Nottingham Trent University Hyllus diardi jumping spider – you’ll hear more about these spiders below. Magdalena Teterdynko/Shutterstock It’s a quiet autumn evening. You’re enjoying some TV, when an unscripted movement catches your eye. A large house spider (Tegenaria domestica) is…