Category: World

We like to believe that whatever ails a company can be fixed by digitising it. And technology is easy to swap. Rip out the old system, bolt in the new one, declare yourself modern. But a company is not its buildings, its machines, or its software. It is the people in it. Organizations do not […]

  For many years, it made more sense for people to dispose of a broken or defective product and replace it with a new one, than to have it repaired. This generated a substantial amount of waste and unnecessary resource consumption.  This will change, starting on 31 July 2026, when it will be possible to […]

For decades, economic growth has been treated as the clearest measure of progress. Yet rising GDP does not always translate into happier, healthier lives, and the environmental and social costs of growth are becoming harder to ignore. Martijn Burger, a professor of happiness economics at Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, believes it is time to […]

As climate change makes extreme weather more frequent and intense, floods, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and storms are increasingly disrupting the roads, railways, airports and waterways. Roads have been closed in Germany during this summer’s heatwaves, for example, while travel has been chaotic on railways in the UK. But climate change does not affect every form […]

The projects are the first to be supported through the National Materials Innovation Programme, announced as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan within the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy. It brings together the people, expertise and investment needed to help turn the UK’s world-leading materials capability into real-world impact. The funding will help businesses assess […]

Diabetes affects more than 800 million people worldwide and can cause a range of serious complications. Among the most challenging are diabetic foot ulcers – chronic wounds that resist healing and can lead to amputation or death if not treated effectively. “Diabetes is a very complex disease, causing a number of serious complications that affect […]

Nature has spent billions of years perfecting the art of building with living cells. A team of researchers is now learning from that process – and finding ways to speed it up. For Massimo Vassalli, professor of bioengineering at the University of Glasgow, the goal is to understand not only how living tissues form, but […]

A recent call by Ukraine’s former defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, for new national elections in Ukraine – which would be the first to take place in the country since 2019 – has sparked a renewed debate about whether it is possible to hold a legitimate vote in wartime. Under normal circumstances, Ukraine’s parliamentary elections would […]

During conversation, our brains are constantly predicting which word comes next. That ability helps us understand speech in a noisy café, or anticipate a friend’s next sentence. This skill for prediction is also linked closely to our enjoyment of music. For Professor Shihab Shamma, an auditory neuroscientist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and […]

Colleagues, Syria has made important progress in dismantling the Assad regime’s chemical weapons programme.  But we must begin by remembering why this work matters.  Last month marked the anniversary of the 2013 Ghouta attack.  We remember and honour the more than 1,400 men, women, and children killed when the Assad regime used sarin nerve agent […]