Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at 200: Revolutionary work of art has spawned two centuries of joy, goodwill and propaganda

By Ted Olson

In early 1824, 30 members of Viennas music community sent a letter to Ludwig van Beethoven petitioning the great composer to reconsider his plans to premiere his latest work in Berlin and instead debut the symphony in...

Boeing’s Starliner is about to launch − if successful, the test represents an important milestone for commercial spaceflight

By Wendy Whitman Cobb

If all goes well late on May 6, 2024, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will blast off into space on Boeings Starliner spacecraft. Launching from the Kennedy Space Center, this last crucial test for Starliner...

Healthy teeth are wondrous and priceless – a dentist explains why and how best to protect them

By Samer Zaky

At an auction in England in 2011, one of John Lennons teeth sold for just over US$31,000. How much are your teeth worth? Teeth are amazing little miracles. They light up our smiles, we use them to speak and we chew...

Radical Optimism is Dua Lipa’s philosophy for dealing with life’s chaos – but radical openness is a better approach

By Joshua Forstenzer

In a teaser video for her third album, Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa explained that every track has that through-the-struggle-you-are-going-to-make-it optimistic feeling. She has also said that the album taps into the pure...

The UK has become the world’s fourth largest exporter, but can it maintain this momentum?

By Ibiyemi Omeihe

UK business is beaming with pride with the recent news of the countrys emergence as the fourth largest exporter in the world based on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report. The UK jumped three...

Where is the legal line between celebrity worship and stalking?

By Alexandros Antoniou

Falling under the spell of a celebrity crush is a common part of adolescence. But in the age of social media and unprecedented access to our idols, admiration can morph into harm. In April, a woman was jailed for...

What to expect from the next generation of chatbots: OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Meta’s Llama-3

By Abdul Sadka

Recently, there has been a flurry of publicity about the planned upgrades to OpenAIs ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot and Metas Llama system, which powers the companys chatbots across Facebook and Instagram. The technology...

US student Gaza protests: five things that have been missed

By Robert P. Jackson

Coverage of the recent student encampments at more than 50 universities across the United States has focused on confrontations between opposing groups of protesters or between protesters and police. The spectacle of...

How much time should you spend sitting versus standing? New research reveals the perfect mix for optimal health

By Christian Brakenridge

People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative. However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our...

Will Solomon Islands’ new leader stay close to China?

By Priestley Habru Et Al

Former foreign minister Jeremiah Manele has been elected the next prime minister of Solomon Islands, defeating the opposition leader, Matthew Wale, in a vote in parliament. The result is a mixed bag for former prime...

Aggressive? Homophobic? Stoic? Here’s what thousands of Australian men told us about modern masculinity

By Michael Flood

Most young adult men in Australia reject traditional ideas of masculinity that endorse aggression, stoicism and homophobia. Nonetheless, the ongoing influence of those ideas continues to harm men and the people around...

Ensuring victims’ rights: The federal ombudsperson’s office is necessary but insufficient

By Alain-Guy Sipowo

Are victims rights well protected in Canada? When the Act for the Recognition of Victims Rights, also known as the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, was adopted in 2015, it raised expectations and hope among victims of...

High interest rates aren’t going away anytime soon – a business economist explains why

By Christopher Decker

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at its May 1, 2024, policy meeting, dashing the hopes of potential homebuyers and others who were hoping for a cut. Not only will rates remain at their current level a...

Trump-proofing Nato: why Europe’s current nuclear deterrents may not be enough to face biggest threats since WWII

By Natasha Lindstaedt

Though a second Trump presidency is not a foregone conclusion, Nato members are gearing up to Trump-proof the organisation and reviewing their defence strategies. Natos concerns about Trumps re-election were heightened...

Why it takes so long to simulate the climate in a supercomputer

By Samar Khatiwala

Climate models are some of the most complex pieces of software ever written, able to simulate a vast number of different parts of the overall system, such as the atmosphere or ocean. Many have been developed by hundreds of...

US election: why it’s not the protesters’ votes that the Democrats should worry about

By Thomas Gift

As hundreds of New York police officers in riot gear were called in to clear away a student protest at Columbia University on Tuesday night, the university president Nemat Shafik was saying she had no choice but to take...

What the Supreme Court is doing right in considering Trump’s immunity case

By Claire B. Wofford

Following the nearly three-hour oral argument about presidential immunity in the Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, many commentators were aghast. The general theme, among legal and political experts alike, was a...

More price rises and empty shelves on the cards as UK brings in Brexit border checks

By Kamran Mahroof Et Al

New import checks on foods arriving from the EU could affect supplies at Britains local delis, high-street greengrocers or independent cafes. Worse, they could lead to shortages that affect the very viability of these...

Electricity from farm waste: how biogas could help Malawians with no power

By Ehiaze Ehimen Et Al

In sub-Saharan Africa, over 600 million people (more than 50% of the population) are without access to electricity. Malawi has one of the worlds lowest electricity access rates just 14.1% of the total population have...

The biblical character who goes ‘down the rabbit hole’ into an alternate reality − just like Alice in Wonderland

By Ryan M. Armstrong

The Bibles Book of Job opens on an ordinary day in the land of Uz, where a man carefully performs religious rituals to protect his children. This routine has never failed Job, who is described as the most righteous person...

Electric air taxis are on the way – quiet eVTOLs may be flying passengers as early as 2025

By Jamey Jacob

Imagine a future with nearly silent air taxis flying above traffic jams and navigating between skyscrapers and suburban droneports. Transportation arrives at the touch of your smartphone and with minimal environmental...

China set to blast off to the far side of the Moon – here’s what it could discover

By Ben Rider-Stokes

China is attempting to recover the first ever soil and rock samples from the lunar far side. The surface mission, Change 6, named after the Chinese Moon goddess Change, is a predecessor to the successful sample return...

Kenya’s devastating floods expose decades of poor urban planning and bad land management

By Sean Avery

Floods in Kenya killed at least 169 people between March and April 2024. The most catastrophic of these deaths occurred after a flash flood swept through a rural village killing 42 people. Death and destruction have also...

‘Britain could soon lose control of its defence industry’ – expert Q&A

By Keith Hartley

Miltary spending is surging in the face of heightened geopolitical tensions. The UK plans to hike its defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, amounting to 87 billion a year. This is an increase from around 2.3% today,...

Business and management graduates can become climate change and sustainability champions

By David Ssekamatte

There is no doubt about it: the world is in the grips of a climate crisis. The headlines are full of reports about extreme weather events and the negative effects of the fossil fuel industry. This reality means that...

Gen Zers and millennials are still big fans of books – even if they don’t call themselves ‘readers’

By Kathi Inman Berens Et Al

Identifying with an activity is different from actually doing it. For example, 49% of Americans play video games, but only 10% identify as gamers. According to a recent survey we conducted, theres also a small gap...

Electric vehicles are usually safer for their occupants – but not necessarily for everyone else

By Jingwen Hu

The future of automobiles is electric, but many people worry about the safety of todays electric vehicles. Public opinion about EV crash safety often hinges on a few high-profile fire incidents. Those safety concerns...

US long-term care costs are sky-high, but Washington state’s new way to help pay for them could be nixed

By Marc Cohen1

If you needed long-term care, could you afford it? For many Americans, especially those with a middle-class income and little savings, the answer to that question is absolutely not. Nursing homes charge somewhere...

The French identify as Europeans – and yet are also notoriously Eurosceptic

By Pierre Bréchon

In less than two months, more than 400 million people will be eligible to vote in the European elections. If the record turnout of 2019 elections is anything to go by, many will be seizing their voting rights, allowing...

What are heart rate zones, and how can you incorporate them into your exercise routine?

By Hunter Bennett

If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you might have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more popular in recent years partly because of the boom in...

Ghosted, orbited, breadcrumbed? A psychotherapist breaks down some perils of digital dating and how to cope

By Danielle Sukenik

Buzzwords describing the digital dating scene are all over social media. Have you been ghosted? Is someone orbiting you? Are you being breadcrumbed? While these dating patterns may not be new, the words to describe them...

LVMH succession planning: keeping it in the family when you’re the world’s richest man

By Qing Wang

In the high end world of luxury and heritage, many brands are still owned and managed by the original founding family. The issue of succession planning, therefore, can be particularly important. This recently came to the...

How the Mandela myth helped win the battle for democracy in South Africa

By Jonny Steinberg

Political history scholar Jonny Steinbergs 2023 book Winnie Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage is a double biography of South Africas most famous political figures Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela Mandela and their role...

Why the potential for another Donald Trump presidency is making Iran very nervous

By Amin Naeni

Theres been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russias war in Ukraine, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and China. But theres one more...

The planetary orbit in Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ is random and chaotic, but could it exist?

By Peter Watson

Note: The following article contains spoilers about the Netflix series 3 Body Problem. I first encountered the three-body problem 60 years ago, in a short story called Placet is a Crazy Place by American science fiction...

China’s money only goes so far – Kokoda shows why history binds PNG and Australia in a far deeper way

By Ian Kemish

There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the gruelling Kokoda Track towards Isurava, high...

How visas for social care workers may be exacerbating exploitation in the sector

By Caroline Emberson

The health and social care visa route was introduced in August 2020 as a response to labour shortages after Brexit and the COVID pandemic. Now, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has found that the...

Nature conservation works, and we’re getting better at it – new study

By Joseph William Bull Et Al

To work in nature conservation is to battle a headwind of bad news. When the overwhelming picture indicates the natural world is in decline, is there any room for optimism? Well, our new global study has some good news: we...

What is meaningful work? A philosopher’s view

By Caleb Althorpe

Work is an inescapable feature of the modern world. Most of us, except for a lucky few, spend a significant portion of our lives working. If this is the case, we may as well try and make it meaningful. In a 2019 report,...

US drugs regulator gives LSD ‘breakthrough’ status for treating anxiety – why this is so significant

By Colin Davidson

LSD was accidentally discovered by Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Switzerland in 1938. It was apparently useless, but from 1947 it was marketed as a cure for everything from schizophrenia to...

Male baldness is often trivialised – our research shows it should be taken seriously

By Paul Hodkinson Et Al

Male pattern baldness, or hereditary hair loss, has not always been taken seriously. Celebrity hair loss and transplants are greeted with fascinated amusement while, in popular media, bald men have often been absent,...

Jordan has long been a beacon of stability in the Middle East – but that looks to be changing

By Simon Mabon

Sat in the Wadi Araba in the baking midday sun, senior Jordanian officials and their Israeli counterparts signed a historic peace agreement in 1994 that ended decades of conflict between the two states. Witnessed by the...

Tarantino abandons his tenth film – five other times Hollywood giants cancelled big projects

By Kieran Foster

Quentin Tarantino has reportedly scrapped what was supposed to be his tenth and final feature film, The Movie Critic, deep into pre-production. This decision is one in a long line of cancelled or unproduced projects...

The politics stopping the UK from opening a youth mobility scheme with Europe

By Erica Consterdine

Earlier this week, it seemed possible that young people in the UK might soon be able to travel freely to work and live in Europe again. The European Commission laid out proposals to open mobility to millions of 18- to...

Dark matter: our new experiment aims to turn the ghostly substance into actual light

By Andrea Gallo Rosso

A ghost is haunting our universe. This has been known in astronomy and cosmology for decades. Observations suggest that about 85% of all the matter in the universe is mysterious and invisible. These two qualities are...

Nigerians throw naira notes around to show love: but it could land you in jail

By Abiodun Odusote

The legal implication of physically damaging the naira, Nigerias currency, came into focus recently with the prosecution of at least two celebrities by the countrys Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Nigeria has a...

Ukraine recap: US$60 billion aid package brings fresh hope to desperate Kyiv

By Jonathan Este

Across the broad sweep of history, its usually overly simplistic to talk about a single event as a turning point. This is especially the case in a conflict such as the one in Ukraine. So many factors geopolitical,...

Sudan’s civil war is rooted in its historical favouritism of Arab and Islamic identity

By Hamdy A. Hassan

The current civil war in Sudan goes beyond a simple power struggle between two generals. It reflects a deep-rooted crisis within the countrys governing structure thats been present since it gained independence from the...

Nigeria is pioneering a new vaccine to fight meningitis - why this matters

By Idris Mohammed

Nigeria recently became the first country to roll out a new vaccine (called Men5CV) recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), which protects people against five strains of meningococcus bacteria. The...

Large retailers don’t have smokestacks, but they generate a lot of pollution − and states are starting to regulate it

By Johnathan Williams

Did you receive a mail-order package this week? Carriers in the U.S. shipped 64 packages for every American in 2022, so its quite possible. That commerce reflects the expansion of large-scale retail in recent decades,...