#corepaedianews

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Why some people lose their accents but others don’t – linguistic expert

FGC/Shutterstock Jane Setter, University of Reading The way a person speaks is an intrinsic part of their identity. It’s tribal, marking a speaker as being from one social group or another. Accents are a sign of belonging as much as something that separates communities. Yet we can probably all think of examples of people who seem to have “lost” their regional or national accent and of others…

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The world’s first Islamic art biennale shines a light on African artists

Marco Cappelletti/OMA/Islamic Arts Biennale Sumayya Vally, UCL The inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale is underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Biennales are large and prestigious international art exhibitions held every two years.) This important new event for the Muslim world features numerous African artists. And the biennale’s artistic director is Sumayya Vally, a South African architecture…

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Sudan’s people toppled a dictator – despite the war they’re still working to bring about democratic change

Civilians protest in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, in December 2022. AFP via Getty Images Linda Bishai, George Washington University While Sudan’s generals have unleashed indiscriminate destruction and occupation on wide swaths of the capital, Khartoum, neighbourhood resistance committees and pro-democracy activists have stepped up to respond to the needs of citizens. They have risked their lives…

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The Nakba: how the Palestinians were expelled from Israel

Evicted: about 750,000 Palestinians were killed or expelled from their land during the Nakba which began on May 15 1948. Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock Marwan Darweish, Coventry University Until 1948, Lajjun was a small village about ten miles south of Nazareth in one of the most fertile valleys in Palestine. Since 1949, the area has been occupied by Jewish settlers who established Kibbutz Meggido…

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Too many digital distractions are eroding our ability to read deeply, and here’s how we can become aware of what’s happening — podcast

Constant distractions affect our ability to concentrate. (Shutterstock) Nehal El-Hadi, The Conversation and Daniel Merino, The Conversation Staying focused on a single task for a long period of time is a growing concern. We are confronted with and have to process incredible amounts of information daily, and our brains are often functioning in overdrive to manage the processing and…

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Salman Rushdie’s Victory City review: a storyteller at the height of his powers

Florian Stadtler, University of Bristol Victory City is an epic chronicle of the rise and fall of Vijayanagar (the capital city of the historic southern Indian Vijayanagara empire), which acquires the name “Bisnaga” through ill-fated attempts at pronunciation by a Portuguese traveller. The story unfolds as a fictional retelling of Bisnaga’s history, premised on the archaeological discovery of the…

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Death and dying: how different cultures deal with grief and mourning

John Frederick Wilson, York St John University Grief is a universal emotion. It’s something we all feel, no matter where we come from or what we’ve been through. Grief comes for us all and as humans who form close relationships with other people, it’s hard to avoid. Studies of grieving brains – be it scans of the brain regions which process grief, or measures of the stress hormone cortisol that…

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The 2,700-year-old rock carvings from when Nineveh was the most dazzling city in the world

<figure> <img src=”https://images.theconversation.com/files/501245/original/file-20221215-23-zd431c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip&#8221; /> <figcaption> Sennacherib – his face deliberately damaged in antiquity – presides over captives from the Levantine city of Lachish. <span class=”attribution”><a class=”source”…

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COVID vaccines: should people under 50 in the UK be offered a fourth dose?

Studio Romantic/Shutterstock Alessandro Siani, University of Portsmouth It’s been nearly two years since Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive an approved COVID vaccine at a clinic in Coventry on December 8, 2020. Since then, almost 13 billion doses of various COVID vaccines have been administered globally. And they are estimated to have prevented millions of…

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Rosetta Stone: a new museum is reviving calls to return the artefact to Egypt

The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. Ashy Cat Inc, CC BY-NC-SA Claire Gilmour, University of Bristol With the Arab spring of 2011, a downturn in tourism and the devastation of COVID, the odds have been stacked against the opening of Giza’s Grand Egyptian Museum, work on which began in 2005 and is due to complete 2023. Nevertheless, it will house over 100,000 artefacts and become the largest…

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Nobel prizes most often go to researchers who defy specialization – winners are creative thinkers who synthesize innovations from varied fields and even hobbies

Innovative ideas spring from many sources, research finds. Yuichiro Chino/Moment via Getty Images Robert Root-Bernstein, Michigan State University and Michele Root-Bernstein, Michigan State University Experts often recommend that people specialize in one field of work or research to maximize their chances of success. Yet our recently published research indicates that successful innovators take a…

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Four common misconceptions about quantum physics

Shrödinger’s cat is world famous, but what does it really mean? Robert Couse-Baker/Flickr, CC BY-SA Alessandro Fedrizzi, Heriot-Watt University and Mehul Malik, Heriot-Watt University Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and…

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Gaza now has a toxic ‘biosphere of war’ that no one can escape

Mark Zeitoun, University of East Anglia and Ghassan Abu Sitta, American University of Beirut Gaza has often been invaded for its water. Every army leaving or entering the Sinai desert, whether Babylonians, Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, or the British, has sought relief there. But today the water of Gaza highlights a toxic situation that is spiralling out of control. A combination of repeated…

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Brazil’s gun ownership boom and why it’s making a lot of people nervous – podcast

President Jair Bolsonaro relaxed rules around private gun ownership. Joedson Alves/EPA Gemma Ware, The Conversation and Daniel Merino, The Conversation Soon after Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil in 2018, he began making it a lot easier for people in the country to buy guns. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to two experts about Brazil’s boom in private…

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Giorgia Meloni and the return of fascism: how Italy got here

George Newth, University of Bath The rise of far-right politician Giorgia Meloni has left many outside Italy asking how her brand of what many argue is fascism can achieve such prominence in a country that has experienced life under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. The answer can be traced back to a recent normalisation of reactionary politics. In truth, the existence of a far-right…

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Fast fashion: why your online returns may end up in landfill – and what can be done about it

Customer orders multiple items, many of which may be returned. Maridav/Shutterstock Patsy Perry, Manchester Metropolitan University Fashion has a notorious environmental footprint, accounting for up to 10% of global carbon dioxide output. This is exacerbated by a fast fashion business model which encourages the frequent purchase of low-priced and non-durable items. Around 30% of online purchases…