SEARCH

Showing 1-10 of 25 results

  • News & article

    Are scientific breakthroughs on the decline?

    News, Published on 27/12/2023

    » This year had barely begun when scientists got some jolting news. On Jan 4, a paper appeared in Nature claiming that disruptive scientific findings have been waning since 1945. An accompanying graph showed all fields on a steep downhill slide.

  • News & article

    Will India be a new economic superpower?

    Oped, Published on 11/08/2023

    » In March 1985, the Wall Street Journal showered India's new prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, with its highest praise. In an editorial titled "Rajiv Reagan", the newspaper compared the 40-year-old Gandhi to "another famous tax cutter we know", and declared that deregulation and tax cuts had triggered a "minor revolution" in India.

  • News & article

    Modern medicine in ancient Rome

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 02/07/2023

    » Doctors are generally held in high regard today, but Romans of the first century were sceptical, even scornful, of medical practitioners, many of whom ministered to ailments they did not understand. Poets especially ridiculed surgeons for being greedy, for taking sexual advantage of patients and, above all, for incompetence.

  • News & article

    Grandparents embrace digital age

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 11/12/2022

    » The 65-year-old woman crouches in a field and holds up a head of cabbage. Behind her, two friends sway back and forth, cucumber and radish in their hands. "This rotten cabbage, let's pull it out, eat it, achieve some foodie freedom," Guo Yifen, the woman with the cabbage, raps in a low and creaky voice in the song Spicy Hot Pot Real Rap.

  • News & article

    German socialite financed own demise

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 11/12/2022

    » Late in the summer of 1938, as the Nazis escalated their persecution of German Jews, Ilse Hesselberger and her daughter, Trudy, travelled from Munich to Milan to visit relatives.

  • News & article

    FTX saga shows not all ends justify means

    Oped, Peter Singer, Published on 30/11/2022

    » In the wake of the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, and amid reports that FTX's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, diverted billions of dollars of clients' funds, some observers have linked the alleged financial malpractice to ideas widely held within the "effective altruism" movement, which Mr Bankman-Fried says inspired him. More specifically, they point to the ethical view that the end justifies the means.

  • News & article

    Embalming, the dying science

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 20/11/2022

    » Walk down two flights of stairs at the back entrance of the James Hunt Funeral Home in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and you reach a white-walled, linoleum-floored, fluorescently lit room, a liminal space that provides the beginning of an answer to one of the oldest and most confounding questions of the human experience: What happens to us when we die?

  • News & article

    Random acts of kindness impress

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 06/11/2022

    » In late August, Erin Alexander, 57, sat in the parking lot of a Target store in Fairfield, California, and wept. Her sister-in-law had recently died, and Ms Alexander was having a hard day.

  • News & article

    Coping with vast open space and sheep

    Sunday Spotlight, Published on 09/10/2022

    » The baas, bleats and bells were fading ever so slightly, and the shepherd's trained ear detected that his flock was veering off the path home, for this was the soundtrack of his life in the Rocky Mountains. "The sheep must be herded," he said in Spanish, as he quickly ascended a hill overlooking a meadow.

  • News & article

    The populist climate threat

    Oped, Published on 04/10/2022

    » Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change. With outright climate denial no longer an option, populist politicians have increasingly positioned themselves as climate doubters and delayers, and this new approach is proving to be quite insidious. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that global greenhouse-gas emissions must peak within three years to keep the Paris agreement's 1.5° Celsius target in reach; by slowing effective action, the tactics of today's populists are becoming an existential threat.

Your recent history

  • Recently searched

    • Recently viewed links

      Did you find what you were looking for? Have you got some comments for us?