Sandy Hetherington, The University of Edinburgh and Holly-Anne Turner, University College Cork
If your eyes have ever been drawn to the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, the texture of a pineapple or the scales of a pinecone, then you have unknowingly witnessed brilliant examples of mathematical patterns in nature.
Bradley J. Irish, Arizona State University
Halloween is a time to embrace all that is disgusting, from bloody slasher films to haunted houses full of fake guts and gore.
But the attraction to stuff that grosses us out goes beyond this annual holiday.
James Lovelock, the maverick scientist and inventor, died surrounded by his family on July 27 2022 – his 103rd birthday. Jim led an extraordinary life. He is best known for his Gaia hypothesis, developed with the brilliant US biologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, which transformed the way we think of life on Earth.