Новости за 22.06.2017

Now that the enormity of the Grenfell Tower tragedy is apparent, it is clear that residents’ concerns about the building’s design, structure and fabric had been ignored, suggesting a catastrophic dereliction of responsibility by corporate and public bodies. In the hours and days that followed, the bereaved and survivors were left, homeless and destitute, to fend for themselves, while social and mainstream media carried often ill-informed demands for an immediate wide-ranging investigation.

Welcome to the new age of higher education. Pexels

Some may argue it’s always wrong to try to evaluate something as complex as teaching. As an educationist – who knows just how complex teaching can be – I have some sympathy with this.

Controversy around the Glastonbury line-up, given the vagaries of the British weather, is an even more reliable feature of the festival calendar than photographs of mud dwelling festival-goers. This year, Norman Cook, one of the festival’s stalwarts, has said that it is “running out of headliners”. His comments echo a growing concern about the lack of artists of a suitable stature to command the attention of a large, diverse festival crowd.

Of all the oddities surrounding Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election, perhaps the oddest was her assertion that “the country is coming together but Westminster is not”. The evidence seemed to show exactly the reverse.

Worrying times. via shutterstock.com

“I remember very distinctly the morning when the final counting was done,” recalled Joaquín de Navascués Melero. “My wife and I – she is also Spanish and she doesn’t have a British passport – we were sitting in the kitchen after breakfast and saying, ‘well which country do we go to now’?”

Genco Inc

In This Corner of the World – Kono sekai no katasumi ni (2016) – is a film caught between worlds. It is caught between the desire to represent a troubled period in Japanese history using traditional animation techniques, and the difficulties in finding funding for “independent” anime that requires innovative uses of social media technologies.

Watching the watchers. Andreia De Sousa Martins, Author provided

Progress in communication technology has transformed our lives in the 21st century. It has also changed how we deal with death. The process of grieving has been hugely affected by social media and the sharing of words, images and video.

The results are in. shutterstock

The results of the new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) have now been announced. Universities across the UK have been ranked gold, silver or bronze based on the quality of their teaching, learning and student experience.

Terror recruits often seem to come from vulnerable backgrounds. But new research suggests that those with traits of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could be more at risk of being radicalised. It follows a number of high-profile cases where autism appears to have played a role in the offender’s behaviour. So if people with ASD could be at higher risk, how can we protect them from falling under the spell of terror organisations such as the so-called Islamic State?

Terror recruits often seem to come from vulnerable backgrounds. But new research suggests that those with traits of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could be more at risk of being radicalised. It follows a number of high-profile cases where autism appears to have played a role in the offender’s behaviour. So if people with ASD could be at higher risk, how can we protect them from falling under the spell of terror organisation such as the so-called Islamic State?

Terror recruits often seem to come from vulnerable backgrounds. But new evidence suggests that those suffering from traits of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could be more at risk of being radicalised. It follows a number of high-profile cases where autism appears to have played a role in the offender’s behaviour. So if people with ASD could be at higher risk, how can we protect them from falling under the spell of terror organisation such as Islamic State?

In one tragic week, many dozens died in two seemingly unconnected fires in the UK and Portugal. One blazed through a high-rise building in London, far away from natural ignitions and cladded with what should have been non-flammable insulation. The other was a wildfire, suggested to have been started by lightning, which then engulfed rural communities surrounded by highly flammable forest plantations.

White Knight Two carrying the spaceplane SpaceShipTwo. jfoust, CC BY

The announcement of the draft Spaceflight Bill in the Queen’s Speech will allow the development of spaceports in the UK. This could see members of the paying public launched into space as tourists, or taking sub-orbital flights from London to New York in just 45 minutes.

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An increasing number of children and adolescents across the world are too heavy for their age, height and sex. Fortunately, new evidence reveals that there are proven, effective ways to tackle overweight and obesity in the young. Two reviews, published today, show that combinations of diet, exercise and behavioural change produce small but important reductions in measures of body mass in school-aged children and adolescents.

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Scientists have spent decades debating whether asteroids and comets hit the Earth at regular intervals. At the same time, a few studies have found evidence that the large extinction events on Earth – such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66m years ago – repeat themselves every 26m to 30m years. Given that there’s good evidence that an asteroid triggered the dinosaur extinction, it makes sense to ask whether showers of asteroids could be to blame for regular extinction events. Читать дальше...

Elenarts/Shutterstock

Scientists have spent decades debating whether asteroids and comets hit the Earth at regular intervals. At the same time, a few studies have found evidence that the large extinction events on Earth – such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66m years ago – repeat themselves every 26m to 30m years. Given that there’s good evidence that an asteroid triggered the dinosaur extinction, it makes sense to ask whether showers of asteroids could be to blame for regular extinction events. Читать дальше...

What's happened a year on? via shutterstock.com

It has been a year since British voters went to the polls and voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. The Brexit referendum triggered a heated debate about the potential economic effects of Brexit. But what has actually happened to the UK economy in the year since the Brexit vote? These six graphs help explain.

Donald Trump has issued a directive to tighten travel and business restrictions on Cuba. He is effectively reversing Barack Obama’s efforts to “normalise” relations with the island; at a rally in Miami, he said that “I am cancelling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba.”

The BBC is the most popular source of online news in the UK. Byrion Smith via Flickr, CC BY-SA

More and more people are getting their news online. This worries those that think the internet and the technologies that underpin it will produce highly polarised news environments, with little potential for the shared debate that well-functioning democracies need. But data from our 2017 Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that polarisation of online news audiences varies dramatically from country to country... Читать дальше...