Новости за 31.08.2017

Foot for thought.

The human foot is distinctive. Our five toes lack claws, we normally present the sole of our foot flat to the ground, and our first and second toes are longer than the smaller ones. In comparison to our fellow primates, our big toes are in line with the long axis of the foot – they don’t stick out to one side.

Foot for thought.

The human foot is distinctive. Our five toes lack claws, we normally present the sole of our foot flat to the ground, and our first and second toes are longer than the smaller ones. In comparison to our fellow primates, our big toes are in line with the long axis of the foot – they don’t stick out to one side.

Some E. Coli protect humans from more harmful strains. Shutterstock

It’s fair to say parasites are generally bad for their hosts. Many cause disease and death so, like most species, we humans usually try to avoid infection at all costs. But it turns out that some parasites, although potentially harmful in isolation, can in fact help hosts to cope with more deadly infections.

Ian Halsey/Flickr, CC BY-NC

The British city of Milton Keynes is probably not the most obvious contender for the title of 2023 European Capital of Culture. It hasn’t exactly got a reputation for being a cultural hot spot: jokes about the blandness of Milton Keynes are entrenched in the popular imagination.

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When the UK government found £1 billion for Northern Ireland to secure Democratic Unionist parliamentary support, critics accused it of turning to the same “magic money tree” it had previously mocked others for believing in.

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When I was ten, my Uncle Chris took me on the ghost train at the fair. I had looked forward to that trip so much; as an imaginative child I devoured ghost stories, and wondered if night terrors were manifestations trying to claw their way over from the other side.

Words are more than their dictionary definition. Amir Ridhwan/Shutterstock

The words “extreme”,“extremist” and “extremism” carry so many connotations these days – far more than a basic dictionary definition could ever cover. Most would agree that Islamic State, the London Bridge and Manchester Arena attackers, as well as certain “hate preachers” are extremists. But what about Darren Osbourne who attacked the Finsbury Park Mosque? Or Thomas Mair who murdered Labour MP Jo Cox? Or even certain media... Читать дальше...

Burning issue. Shutterstock

For ravers of a certain age, the electronic band known (mostly) as the KLF provided many of the dance floor fillers of the early 1990s. What Time is Love? and 3am Eternal were part of the euphoria of club culture.

Many midwives still want to reduce the number of unnecessary interventions during childbirth. COLLATERAL/Shutterstock

There has been much interest in the fact that the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) is no longer running its Campaign for Normal Birth. After 12 years of focusing on “normal birth”, the end of the campaign is not a kneejerk reaction to a specific event, but rather a natural progression. In any organisation – commercial or public – campaigns need to be revitalised and adjusted to serve a changing social and cultural environment.

The impact of the Brexit vote may finally be losing its chokehold on the two-party duoply of British politics. The Labour Party has now called for a transitional period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, during which it argues single market and customs union membership should continue unchanged. This is the first evidence that Labour is ready to start challenging the dominant Brexit narrative.

@bobgranleese via WeWantPlates

The past few years have seen an explosive rise in the popularity of food being plated in ever stranger and more unusual ways. What started with the world’s top modernist restaurants serving food from flowerpots (Noma, Copenhagen) and off plates resembling the seashore (The Fat Duck, Bray) has now percolated through to the local gastropub and cocktail bar. Take a trip out to the latter and you may well find your dinner served on a flat cap or shovel or your drink presented in a Wellington boot. Читать дальше...

@bobgranleese via WeWantPlates

The past few years have seen an explosive rise in the popularity of food being plated in ever stranger and more unusual ways. What started with the world’s top modernist restaurants serving food from flowerpots (Noma, Copenhagen) and off plates resembling the seashore (The Fat Duck, Bray) has now percolated through to the local gastropub and cocktail bar. Take a trip out to the latter and you may well find your dinner served on a flat cap or shovel or your drink presented in a Wellington boot. Читать дальше...

Shifting mindsets. shutterstock

Pain is never a nice things to experience, but it is one of the most useful bodily signals we have. It acts like an alarm system – sending an immediate message for highly harmful and potentially fatal conditions – so you know that when you touch that boiling hot pan, you should take your hand away very quickly.

BiliScreen, used for detecting signs of jaundice in a person's eye. Dennis Wise/University of Washington

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. It has a five-year survival of just 3%, and a ten-year survival of less than 1%. The prime reason for these depressing figures is that the disease is very difficult to detect in the early stages. By the time it is detected, it is often incurable. But help may be at hand.

Bioterrorism exercise. Oregon National Guard/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The gene editing technique CRISPR has been in the limelight after scientists reported they had used it to safely remove disease in human embryos for the first time. This follows a “CRISPR craze” over the last couple of years, with the number of academic publications on the topic growing steadily.

Nearly one in 100 children are in care santypan

When the state gets involved in the welfare of children or young people under 18, we call them “looked after”. They might live with foster parents, in a children’s home, with friends or relatives, or even with their own family under a compulsory home supervision order.

Zakharchuk/Shutterstock.com

Art and science are often seen as complete opposites: art is subjective, while science aims to discover objective facts about nature.

President Calvin Coolidge meeting with a delegation of Native Americans at the White House. Library of Congress

The US president, Donald Trump, spoke in June to a delegation of tribal leaders at the White House, claiming that: “Infringements on tribal sovereignty are deeply unfair to Native Americans and Native American communities.” His sincerity was hard to believe.

Lionsgate

Peter Ackroyd’s novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) features in two adaptations this September: Opera Philadelphia’s Elizabeth Cree, and Juan Carlos Medina’s film The Limehouse Golem. It seems that this is the golem’s moment – but why does Ackroyd’s neo-Victorian novel speak to us now, and how far does Medina capture the London of 1880?

Before she landed herself in hot diplomatic water by allegedly attacking a South African model with a power cord, Zimbabwe’s notoriously ill-tempered first lady, Grace Mugabe, joined the clamour for her aged husband Robert to name a successor. Curiously, she also called for a female vice president, stirring up rumours that she’s positioning herself for a presidential bid in 2023, not next year. That would take her name off a growing list of potential successors to one of the world’s oldest presidents. Читать дальше...

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Japanese banks Nomura and Daiwa recently indicated they are moving their EU base to Frankfurt and are applying for the appropriate regulatory licences. The announcements follow similar ones from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, among others. Mitsubishi, however, seems to prefer Amsterdam and – oh, the irony – so does the largely UK-government-owned RBS.