Olayinka Oyegbile, Trinity University, Lagos
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress in Nigeria, has been declared winner of the country’s keenly contested presidential election.
04Mar/23
Tag Archives: Creative Commons
04Mar/23
How to ditch ‘fomo’ and foster ‘jomo’ – the joy of missing out
Fuschia Sirois, Durham University
Have you ever felt a sense of joy because you knew you were missing out on an invitation to a party, shiny new opportunities or the latest social media posts and influencer trends because you were “unplugged”? If so, then you have probably experienced “jomo” – the joy of missing out.
03Mar/23
De La Soul is coming to streaming services – a brief guide to their best work
Adam de Paor-Evans, University of Plymouth
De La Soul is one of the most significant and iconic groups in the history of hip hop. Comprising three members, Trugoy The Dove, Posdnous and Maseo, De La Soul worked together for 35 years releasing innovative music, touring and collaborating with artists from a range of genres until Trugoy’s death in February 2023.
02Mar/23
AI could make more work for us, instead of simplifying our lives
Barbara Ribeiro, University of Manchester
There’s a common perception that artificial intelligence (AI) will help streamline our work. There are even fears that it could wipe out the need for some jobs altogether.
But in a study of science laboratories I carried out with three colleagues at the University of Manchester, the introduction of automated processes that aim to simplify work — and free people’s time — can also make that work more complex, generating new tasks that many workers might perceive as mundane.
27Feb/23
The cockney dialect is not dead – it’s just called ‘Essex’ now
Amanda Cole, University of Essex
As English dialects go, cockney is one of the most influential. Long considered the preserve of working-class communities in east London, it has shaped the way people speak across the country, from Reading, Milton Keynes and even Hull all the way to Glasgow.
21Feb/23
How your brain decides what to think
Valerie van Mulukom, Coventry University
You’re sitting on the plane, staring out of the window at the clouds and all of a sudden, you think back to how a few months ago, you had a heart-to-heart with a good colleague about the pressure you experience at work. How do thoughts seemingly completely unrelated to the present pop into our heads? Why do we remember certain things and not others? Why does our mind go off on tangents and why do we have daydreams?
21Feb/23
15-minute cities: how to separate the reality from the conspiracy theory
Alex Nurse, University of Liverpool; Alessia Calafiore, The University of Edinburgh, and Richard J. Dunning, University of Liverpool
Conspiracy theories aren’t a new thing, and for as long as they’ve been around they’ve ranged from the benign to the absurd. From the six moon landings being faked to the Earth being flat, or our ruling class being lizards, we’ve all probably come across them in one form or another.
Yet, in a surprise twist, the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023 comes from an unlikely corner: town planning. This relates to the idea of “the 15-minute city” and has even gone so far as to be mentioned in UK parliament by an MP who called the idea “an international socialist concept” that will “cost us our personal freedom”.
14Feb/23
Valentine’s Day’s connection with love was probably invented by Chaucer and other
Natalie Goodison, Durham University
As an undergraduate, on a tour of Europe, I happened to step into the church where Saint Valentine’s head was kept. The tour guide told us a (likely fictitious) story about Saint Valentine performing forbidden marriages for persecuted Christians under the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus (possibly 269-270 AD). Valentine was then imprisoned and beheaded in Rome.
His saint’s day has since become a celebration of romance. But earlier medieval accounts of Valentine’s life contain no mention of his association with love.
14Feb/23
Five things research can teach us about having better sex, according to a sex therapist
Chantal Gautier, University of Westminster
Sex can be wonderful, but it can also be tricky. Science may be the furthest thing from your mind when you’re getting intimate with someone. But actually, there’s a lot we can learn from science when it comes to sex.
The science of sex is a broad field of research that encompasses many aspects of human sexuality, from physiology to the psychological and social factors that influence sexual behaviour.
13Feb/23
Psychopaths: why they’ve thrived through evolutionary history – and how that may change
Jonathan R Goodman, University of Cambridge
When you start to notice them, psychopaths seem to be everywhere. This is especially true of people in powerful places. By one estimate, as many as 20% of business leaders have “clinically relevant levels” of psychopathic tendencies – despite the fact as little as 1% of the general population are considered psychopaths. Psychopaths are characterised by shallow emotions, a lack of empathy, immorality, anti-social behaviour and, importantly, deceptiveness.