Population Movements and Genetics A Study of the origins and distribution of hum on populations used to be based on archaeological and fossil evidence. A number of techniques developed since the 1950s however have placed the study of these subjects on a sounder and more objective footing. The best information on early population movements is … more →

Volcanoes (Earth Shattering News) When Mount Pinatubo suddenly erupted on 9 June 1991, the power of volcanoes past and present again hit the headlines A Volcanoes are the ultimate earth-moving machinery. A violent eruption can blow the top few kilometers off a mountain, scatter fine ash practically all over the globe and hurt rock fragments … more →

Attitude of Language It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people feel they have a right to hold an opinion about it And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily … more →

Alternative Medicine in Australia The first students to study alternative medicine at university level in Australia began their four-year, full-time course at the University of Technology, Sydney, in early 1994. Their course covered, among other therapies, acupuncture. The theory they learnt is based on the traditional Chinese explanation of this ancient healing art: that it … more →

A Neuroscientist reveals – How to think differently In the last decade a revolution has occurred in the way that scientists think about the brain. We now know that the decisions humans make can be traced to the firing patterns of neurons in specific parts of the brain. These discoveries have led to the field … more →

Spoken corpus comes to life A  The compiling of dictionaries has been historically the provenance of studious professorial types – usually bespectacled – who love to pore over weighty tomes and make pronouncements on the finer nuances of meaning. They were probably good at crosswords and definitely knew a lot of words, but the image … more →

The Nature and Aims of Archaeology Archaeology is partly the discovery of treasures of the past, partly the work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and … more →

Highs and lows Hormone levels – and hence our moods –may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so … more →

Votes for Women The suffragette movement, which campaigned for votes for women in the early twentieth century, is most commonly associated with the Pankhurst family and militant acts of varying degrees of violence. The Museum of London has drawn on its archive collection to convey a fresh picture with its exhibition. The Purple, White and Green: … more →

Migratory beekeeping Taking wing To eke out a full-time living from their honeybees, about half the nation’s 2,000 commercial beekeepers pull up stakes each spring, migrating north to find more flowers for their bees. Besides turning floral nectar into honey, these hardworking insects also pollinate crops for farmers -for a fee. As autumn approaches, the … more →