Bingeing: Has Covid-19 got the world drinking more than before?
Sourdough and baking helped many people cope with 2020 and many have found solace in family Zoom calls. But for millions around the world, the stress of the pandemic and tedium of lockdown life saw them seek the comforting embrace of another, fickle friend: alcohol. Like most social behaviours, drinking...
Black tigress: Toni Morrison made Memory sit down at the table with her audience
She did not look away. When Toni Morrison’s clear imagining gaze met uncomfortable things, she faced them down. A poisoned dog jerking round the yard like a toy. Human placenta in a field. The transparent underskin of a bobcat gutted on a kitchen table. The greyish panties, still round her...
Covid clustering: Herd immunity will be game of ‘whack-a-mole’ with outbreaks
Previous vaccination efforts suggest that uptake of Covid-19 vaccine will tend to cluster geographically, herd immunity experts explain. In the past, localised resistance to measles vaccination, for example, resulted in small pockets of disease resurgence. “Geographic clustering is going to make the path to herd immunity a lot less of...
Coronavirus vaccine hesitancy starting to make ‘herd immunity’ a remote possibility
As Covid-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to Covid-19 to block most transmission – a ‘herd-immunity threshold’ –...
‘Unregulated efforts that create ‘trade-offs’ harmful to global afforestation’
Ongoing research shows that most deforestation is man-made and that an effective global policy response is needed to address the disappearance of the world’s forests. The main problem is that there are currently too many uncoordinated regulatory processes that are creating trade-offs, conflicts, leakage effects and loopholes resulting in complexity...
Journalists’ organisation says use of spyware compromises press freedom
In light of dozens of incidents in which journalists and those close to them have been targeted with spyware, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) hasy launched a campaign calling on governments to stop the use of spyware and to take steps to prevent states with bad press freedom records...
Species that often mate outside a bonded pair produce larger and faster seeds – research
Starting in the late 1980s, the advent of genetic analysis put the final nail in the coffin for the idea of monogamy in birds, showing that in many species, males other than the one at the nest can father some of the offspring. Sperm competition, it appeared, is a concern...
Promiscuity: Insects, birds are as fiercely protective and jealous as humans
On a spring day in 1965, 20-year-old biology student Geoff Parker found himself lying flat on his stomach in an English meadow, staring at a pat of cow dung and the frantic activities of dung flies around it. But this was far from a case of a student grudgingly accepting...
Kenya: US copyright law, fake Gmail accounts used to censor gambling story
On February 4, Emmanuel Dogbevi turned to Twitter with a plea for help. He tagged press freedom groups and colleagues in a series of tweets, lamenting how allegations that he violated US copyright law had prompted his news website to be taken offline. Dogbevi told CPJ via phone that Ghana...
Press Freedom: Sixty-five journalists killed last year in the line of duty
The number of journalists killed last year in the line of duty rose by 17 to stand at 65 compared to 2019’s 49, bringing further to the fore questions about the safety of media professionals as well as the right of the public to access information, and Press Freedom. The...
