Новости за 28.06.2017

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We know that mindfulness can transform the life of an individual. But did you know it could also change the world?

School children today face a huge amount of pressure. smolaw/Shutterstock

The UK government is making £200,000 available for “mental health first aid” training in secondary schools, according to a statement released by the prime minister’s office. The teachers who will receive training under this new programme “will receive practical advice on how to deal with issues such as depression and anxiety, suicide and psychosis, self-harm, and eating disorders”.

fizkes / shutterstock

Imagine going for a job interview and the employer sitting across from you is truly intimidating. He’s big, bold, loud and mean-looking. What might this do to your confidence? To your mannerisms? To your way of speaking?

Farmers are used to looking into the future. Their livelihoods depend on taking a decent guess about everything from the weather to market forces. But a recent survey reveals that a new level of uncertainty looms on the horizon for post-Brexit farming in Britain.

Lionsgate

Another big-screen celebration of the man frequently voted the “greatest Briton” is currently greeting cinema goers. Churchill (2017) tells the story of the war leader as he tussles with his subordinates during the final preparations for D-Day in June 1944. The film certainly has its charms, but do we really need yet another version of “Winnie the War Hero”?

Kenny1/Shutterstock

Over the last five years a revolution on the British high street has seen businesses and their customers wholeheartedly embrace online shopping.

Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationism – the idea that all life was uniquely created by God – is given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in Turkey has now banned evolution from its national curriculum.

Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationism – the idea that all life was uniquely created by God – is given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in Turkey has now banned evolution from its national curriculum.

As Brexit negotiations get underway, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the UK can pursue its former “have your cake and eat it” strategy, particularly when it comes to a trade deal.

The curse of survival. Parilov

When people are treated for cancer, it is common for them to fear it could come back – either in the same place or another part of the body. In the last decade, medical researchers have increasingly come to recognise the breadth of these fears and how it can affect someone.

Netflix

What if we could meet the challenges of the ongoing environmental crisis without changing our behaviour and practices in any way? What if, rather than revising our way of life, we could instead propose a few technical fixes that would reduce our environmental impacts while allowing us to go on living as before? Would this really settle the ethical and political questions that are posed by our current moment of climate catastrophe, mass extinction, resource scarcity and industrialised animal slaughter? Читать дальше...

PA, CC BY-SA

Like many of the shiny new technologies that come out of California, the world embraced the fitbit wristband in a huge wave of enthusiasm when it was launched in 2012. But it wasn’t just a cool, must-have fad. The range of health and fitness trackers and weareable tech has since multiplied, reflecting the widespread desire to be physically active.

Loyal to a fault: Andrew Johnson. Godot13 via Wikimedia Commons

As the circus that is the Trump presidency lurches from one disaster to the next, some of the president’s opponents apparently believe he’s just one Twitter tantrum away from being thrown out of office. They ought to know better.

DisobeyArt / Shutterstock.com

There are now more mobile devices than people on the planet. You only have to glance around on trains, in the street, or in cafes to see how increasingly lost we are in screen time. We don’t just hold our phones, we cradle them.

Warnings were loud and clear. Carl Court/PA Archive/PA Images

As a special correspondent for the BBC, I investigated the Lakanal House fire in 2009 that killed six people in a south London tower block and its consequences over the next few years. What seems patently obvious in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower inferno is that trust in the fire safety regime governing residential tower blocks is unravelling dangerously quickly. Fundamental lessons from the Lakanal fire were ignored – and the government and its advisers must accept the blame.

Pexels

It’s hard to think back to what English pubs and clubs were like before the law about smoke-free public places came into force ten years ago. Do you remember the dense fog, the smell of tobacco smoke on your clothes and hair after a night out, and the ashtrays loaded with cigarette butts?

adrianisen

It’s common for security experts to regard themselves as necessary critics, guardians against malpractice, and raisers of worst-case scenarios. While there is a very present fear of insecurity these days, it’s rare that we celebrate security. But on the tenth anniversary of a revolutionary technology, we’d like to do just that: happy birthday to the iPhone, first released in June 2007.

The Qatar crisis flared up when the official Qatar News Agency quoted Sheikh Tamim, the Emir of Qatar, as saying that “there is no wisdom in harbouring hostility towards Iran”. These words not only effectively supported Iran, but criticised the US and Saudi Arabia’s policies towards it. Qatari officials quickly announced that the news agency had been hacked, and the report was “fake news” – but it was too late.

Camden Council has been evacuating residents from four tower blocks in north London in response to concerns over their fire safety, and a total of 120 local authority and housing association-owned tower blocks across England have now been shown to have cladding that is “dangerously combustible”. Tests are continuing.

Can we mitigate the risks associated with fracking? Justin Woolford/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Can fracking be safe? A new study suggests how fracking – the process of extracting oil and gas trapped in rocks deep underground by blasting water into the rock at high pressure – can be conducted without causing earthquakes, which is one of the most well known concerns. While this kind of research can help produce guidelines to reduce the risks associated with fracking, ultimately, it makes no sense to talk of fracking being entirely “safe”. Читать дальше...