Would you want a quarry near your house? Driven by EU law, environmental impact assessment is now a requirement for developers planning mineral extraction, waste disposal sites and major housing schemes. Initially, the emphasis lay on the prevention of environmental damage, but very rapidly this shifted into the language of ‘sustainability’, and what might be […]

Dr Annette Rid discusses the key points of using unproven treatments during an epidemic, the ethical controversy and draws some important lessons for how we should use unproven vaccines and treatments during future epidemics. In 2013, the world began to witness an unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa that is now smoldering. Ebola virus disease […]

Life inside the uterus is not as closed off as you might think. Syed Qadri explores how a mother’s behaviour alters her baby during pregnancy..

The laughter of little babies is infectious, enchanting and may play an important role in their early development. Yet it was largely overlooked by science. Caspar conducted a large global survey of new parents to discover what makes their babies laugh (see babylaughter.net). In this talk Caspar will present the results of his research and show how it reveals a serious and important purpose to this delightful behaviour.