Новости за 24.02.2017

Will the moon move from servant to equal? Gregory H. Revera/wikipedia, CC BY-SA

Every now and then a scientific paper makes a real splash. We had one recently, to judge from recent headlines. “Moon rises to claim its place as a planet” said The Sunday Times on February 19, while the Mail Online asked “Is this lunarcy?”. The articles were among many responding to the humble paper: “A Geophysical Planet Definition”, which suggested that the criteria for determining what constitutes a planet need an overhaul. Читать дальше...

Stainless steel is the metal of choice in hospitals. Shutterstock

Fantasilandia in Chile, one of Latin America’s largest theme parks, has replaced its most frequently touched surfaces with copper to help reduce the spread of germs and protect the health of its visitors. But why? Because copper and its alloys exhibit impressive antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal properties.

Doris sounds like the sort of name your grandmother might have. It’s not particularly scary. But the name now has a rather different association, after “Storm Doris” tore through the UK. The Met Office, the UK’s national weather forecaster, put much of the country on “amber alert” and reported 94mph gusts along with severe rain and snow.

It seems barely conceivable, but then it is Premier League football, a realm where almost anything seems possible. Ten months after guiding unconsidered, provincial, 5000-1 Leicester City to the Premier League title – arguably the greatest shock in the entire history of the English game – the club’s Italian manager and coach, Claudio Ranieri has been unceremoniously sacked.

The operation to retake Iraq’s second city of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS) has entered its crucial phase. The Iraqi army, federal police, elite counter-terrorism units, and rapid response troops are operating on the ground, bolstered by discreetly embedded US special forces. The US and Iraqi air forces, meanwhile, are carrying out strikes.

Scott Free Prods/Robert Viglasky

“When you left London the East India Company was a trading company,” Tom Hardy’s troubled anti-hero James Delaney is warned in the second episode of the BBC’s prime-time drama Taboo. “Now it is God Almighty.” Discussing the show before it aired, writer Stephen Knight referred to the East India Company as “the equivalent of the CIA, the NSA and the biggest, baddest multinational corporation on earth, all rolled into one self-righteous, religiously motivated monolith”. Читать дальше...

Alan/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever may have (for now) seen off a clumsy takeover bid by Kraft Heinz, but that doesn’t mean questions over corporate takeover policy in Britain have gone away. In fact, it was odd that such a discussion was absent from the UK government’s recent industrial strategy proposals.

Whether you love tattoos or hate them, the British clearly have something of a penchant for engraving their bodies with inky art. There are a staggering 2,228 tattoo parlours in the UK. Compare this with 2,034 Costa coffee shops or 898 Starbucks, and you begin to understand why tattoo studios have been heralded as helping to save the British high street.

The Copeland and Stoke Central byelections have delivered dramatic political developments for Britain. Both previously Labour-held seats, the byelections were triggered by two sitting MPs who took jobs outside politics.

Lada Niva: still going strong. Shutterstock

When mass market 4x4s first appeared on the scene in the 1970s, I was a little boy. I was in awe of these huge, rugged things that started appearing everywhere. Toyota Landcruisers, Range Rovers, Mercedes G models, Chevy Blazers … they had an air of exoticism and adventure that I found irresistible.

arindambanerjee/Shutterstock.com

Children with high and medium academic ability at age 11 are more likely to use cannabis in late adolescence compared to children with low academic ability, according to a new study published in BMJ Open.

When an Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber killed 88 people and wounded hundreds more at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan on February 16, it did not deter the devotees of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the 13th-century Sufi mystic, who draws millions to his tomb in Pakistan’s Sindh privince.

Gio.tto/Shutterstock.com

Would you want to know if you were at a higher risk of getting dementia later in life? Would you want to know that you could die under general anaesthesia, or might die suddenly of heart failure? Would you want to know if you had a higher-than-normal chance of getting cancer? You could learn these things by looking at your genome. But would you want to be faced with the answers?

As the Labour Party struggles in the search for votes, picking up bruises in by-elections, thinking about its doctrine may seem an indulgence.

A new population? Shutterstock

Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will broadly be defined not just by advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them. For some, the question of whether or not the human race will live to see a 22nd century turns upon this latter consideration. While forecasting the imminence of an AI-centric future remains a matter of intense debate... Читать дальше...

Byelections are curious beasts in the political jungle. On the one hand, they are objectively minor political events: the replacement of a single MP for however long is left until the next general election. On the other, they become crucibles for bigger political debates; the national played out on a local stage.