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Lois Allen, Kyiv (2025)

13/07/2023

A ‘tarnished victory’

Back at the fifth Great Six Days Race, the pedestrians began to emerge from their tents and arrange themselves on the track. They hailed from as far away as England and the southeast Baltic (then Prussia), and their condition was scrutinised in minute detail by the audience, who discussed them as one might a horse. Some thought Charles Rowell's physique was "too fine" – he looked thin and had evidently done too much training, they said. Others speculated about Panchot and George Hazael's feet, which had previously been injured. In New York, John Ennis was the favourite, while Boston had high hopes for its own athlete Frank Hart – who later became one of America's first black sports stars.

After much handshaking and removing of coats, the men were ready. The starting signal sounded and they were off – while cheers from the crowd literally shook the building. Hazael was the first to complete a lap, and maintained his lead for the first 12. Each time the contestants approached the further end of the pitch, the spectators swarmed to that side, crushing each other and almost breaking the barrier at the front.

Twenty four hours later, Rowell had amassed a lead – and won a large bonus and various silver trinkets. By 36 hours in, he had broken a record. Merritt, Hazael, Hart and Guyon jostled for second place around 30 miles (48km) behind him, while Weston was accused of "absurd antics and idiotic grimaces" by furious fans, after taking an eight-hour break. Over the coming days, contestants gradually dropped out and it started to look like Rowell's victory was secure. Then on Friday morning, he was abruptly struck down with fatigue. He spent six hours in his tent and finally emerged "in convulsions", much to the alarm of the crowd – particularly those who had bet on him.

However, Rowell rebounded, even joining in with a run that lasted into the night. On the final day of the race, he reached his 500th mile, and eventually added another 30 to this total. Then he abruptly retired to his tent, more than two hours before the allotted time was up, secure in his position.

11/07/2023

From walks through history to adventures in lost worlds, a new book – with spectacular imagery – showcases more than 50 of the world's best hiking routes. Here are five favourites.

Every journey starts with one small step, to paraphrase Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. But some journeys contain more steps than others.

"The most remarkable treks take us to other worlds – places unfamiliar to us," said author and global trekker Colin Salter, who discovered the pleasures of hiking as a young man, escaping from the confines of boarding school to explore Scottish mountains with friends. "They're a way to discover new climates, new terrain, new altitudes and new cultures. They're physical challenges with sensory rewards – wildlife, botany, scenic grandeur, new music, old stories and shared experiences with fellow travellers on life's footpath."

Salter has compiled more than 50 of the world's best hiking routes in his new book Remarkable Treks: Plan the Walking Trip of a Lifetime on the World's Most Spectacular Trails. From the Inca Trail (Peru) to the John Muir Trail (US), the West Highland Way (Scotland) to the Milford Track (New Zealand), famous hiking routes inspire travellers to test their mettle and experience some of the most astounding natural landscapes on the planet, while lesser-known trails offer a chance to discover hidden corners of countries and cultures. Here, Salter chooses five of his favourites.

06/07/2023

Why mental health gets missed

The pandemic has reshaped our society in a multitude of ways – many workplaces have accepted their employees have different needs and preferences, and can work effectively from home should they need to do so.

Yet Dr Caroline Leaf, a US-based neuroscientist and mental-health expert, and author of Clean Up Your Mental Mess, believes there is still little space for employees to discuss how their mental health might impact on their ability to do their job in person. “Even though there’s been some improvement, being open about your mental health in the workplace is still not as stress-free as it should be,” she says.

Leaf believes this is because many people still see mental-health issues as a character flaw, and those suffering still experience stigma, embarrassment and shame. When someone is already intensely aware of how they come across to others, the idea of broaching their mental health with colleagues or bosses can seem almost impossible.

Meg believes there is greater space for discussion around staff who want to work remotely due to caregiving duties or a long commute, but that speaking out about social anxiety is still off-limits. “Conversations around mental health are still closed behind a door, leaving individuals to have to tiptoe around the topic,” she says.

Her workplace has now asked her to come back to the office two days a week, something Meg believes she will be able to handle on days when her social anxiety is under control – but says could be “terrifying” when her anxiety is at its worst.

03/07/2023

The idea of AI in the workplace may be unnerving – yet far more workers are excited about the technology than it may seem.

Some people find it hard not to panic when reading the latest iteration of the ‘AI is going to take your job’ headline – especially considering the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence tools in recent years. But Gus Nisbet, a 30-year-old music producer, is excited about what AI has to offer the workplace.

“It's all about co-creation,” says Nisbet, who also works as a creative strategist at sonic branding agency MassiveMusic in London. He is already using generative AI tools including OpenAI’s ChatGPT to streamline administrative tasks and enhance creative projects. “I’ll start up the idea and then use AI to flesh it out and develop it in more varied ways,” he says.

Since Nisbet has integrated AI tools into his daily workflow, he’s seen a huge surge in efficiency. Tasks that may usually have taken a half-day to complete, like analysing client feedback on a project, can be handled much faster when run through ChatGPT. “If you are using it in the right way, on the right task, you can crunch about four or five hours of work into about 30 minutes,” he says. He uses that extra time to focus on the tasks that require complex thinking and creativity.

While the growing capabilities of AI are certainly making many workers anxious, others are embracing the technology. They are already using the tools to improve on-the-job productivity and efficiency. And emerging data shows that there may be more AI optimism in the workplace than headlines – and our own biases – lead us to believe.

Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index, released in May 2023, shows while 49% of people are worried AI will replace their jobs, far more – 70% – would delegate as much work as possible to AI to lessen their workloads.

“Employees are more eager for AI to help with this burden of digital debt than they are afraid of job loss,” says Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft’s general manager for Future of Work. According to the report, 64% of workers struggle to get all their work done each day, often due to the constant influx of emails, meetings and other digital distractions. Once workers start experimenting with AI tools, says Stallbaumer, they realise “these tools are not going to replace my job, they’re actually going to be able to augment what I can do and my capabilities”.

Stallbaumer points to her own workflow, in which she uses AI to manage her meetings. “When every meeting becomes a digital artefact you can engage with it in a whole new way,” she says. Stallbaumer will use AI to summarise key points of meetings she’s missed and can even ask it to analyse the meeting in real time, to determine what people agree on and what requires further discussion.

28/06/2023

In 1964, Jane Goodall's husband Hugo van Lawick took a photo of her and an infant chimp reaching out to each other. Decades later, it continues to impact how we view chimpanzees.

On 14 July 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived by boat to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania. Here, in what is now Gombe Stream National Park, her ground-breaking scientific research into chimpanzee behaviour began.

Previously a secretarial student without an undergraduate degree in science, Goodall says she observed her wild subjects with an open mind and without preconceptions. Controversially at the time, she defied convention by giving these chimps names instead of numbers.

One image taken of Goodall during this time captured her fresh approach, challenged the scientific norm and has become one of the world's most recognisable photos.

Her late husband, Dutch photographer Hugo van Lawick, went to Gombe in 1962 where he took thousands of photographs of Goodall. But it was in 1964 that he took what became an iconic photograph of Goodall with an infant chimp known as Flint.

In the photo, Goodall is shown crouching down and reaching out with her right arm to Flint, the first chimp to be born at Gombe after Goodall's arrival, as he extends his left arm up towards her.

As Goodall tells BBC Future, this was long before the era of digital photography, so she had to wait a while before she could see the printed images. "It was couple of months or more before there was a safe way to send exposed rolls to the [National] Geographic for processing, and then another wait while they sent the prints back to Kigoma," she recalls. "When I saw it, though I did not realise it would become iconic, it did make me think of Michelangelo's painting of God reaching out to Man."

26/06/2023

od of Carnage premiered in the West End in 2008 before transferring to Broadway the following year.

The play went on to win both the Tony and Olivier Award for best comedy, as well as additional Tonys for best play and best actress for Marcia Gay Harden.

Agyeman's screen credits include Torchwood, Silent Witness, Law and Order and The Carrie Diaries, as well as the most recent film in the Matrix franchise, Resurrections.

She will appear alongside Ariyon Bakare, Dinita Gohil and Martin Hutson in the Hammersmith production of God of Carnage, which runs from 1 to 30 September.

Agyman said the Lyric had an "incredible history and tradition" and praised its "consistently solid, inclusive and high-calibre work".

Director Nicholai La Barrie said: "God of Carnage pokes fun at wealth, power and money. It lifts the lid on civility which is immensely funny to watch. From the moment I read this play, I imagined it to be a reflection of the cosmopolitan cities that we live in."

In a review of a 2018 revival of the play in Bath, the Guardian's Arifa Akbar recalled how the show's 2009 run in the West End "put in just enough laughs, balanced with middle-class menace and marital rage, for the play to earn its reputation as a savage comedy that tears away the veneer of respectability in modern bourgeois lives to expose the bigotry, anger and predations that lie beneath".

Prior to God of Carnage, writer Reza made her name with the the 1994 play Art, which also won a string of Olivier and Tony Awards.

21/06/2023

Kipchoge is about to plant 42,000 indigenous trees and says the forest in Kaptagat is just the start for his foundation.

COP27: No Greta, but activists make waves at climate summit
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"We want to adopt a forest in every county to make sure that we get over 50 acres [of trees]," he said.

"The reason for planting indigenous trees is that they are rich in production of oxygen."

Kipchoge describes sport as a "universal profession" and believes it is the fastest and most effective platform to spread the message of fighting climate change as widely as possible.

"Sport can reach billions of people across the world in an easy way," he added.

"There is not a platform in this world where you can push an agenda through apart from sport. From athletics, to motor sports to football, to any sort of sport, it's the only way to push and reach the general public as fast as possible."

Perhaps fittingly given the involvement of both Kipchoge and Cape Town race organisers themselves, the battle to save the world is a marathon not a sprint - but the race is on.

16/06/2023

Of particular interest to her are the radar altimeters that gauge the thickness of the floes by measuring the difference in height between the top surface of the sea-ice and the surface of the ocean - the ice freeboard.

Satellites, such as the European Space Agency's Cryosat-2 platform, can use this observation to infer the depth of the submerged portion of a floe - the ice draft - and thus get a 3D view of the pack ice, not just its 2D extent.

The complication in this approach is taking account of any snow that might be sitting on the ice. This will change the horizon from which radar measurement signals bounce back to the satellite.

From Prof Stroeve's winter experiments, it appears Esa's Cryosat mission has a tendency to gauge the sea-ice as being thicker than it really is.

The space agency, in collaboration with the European Union, is now developing a new spacecraft called Cristal that would operate with two different radar frequencies.

"This would give you the opportunity then to retrieve both ice thickness and snow depth on the same satellite system. Snow depth on top of the ice has always been one of those big unknowns that has contributed to our inability to really map sea-ice thickness as well as we'd like," said Prof Stroeve.

Esa announced the award on Monday of a €300m (£275m) contract to the aerospace manufacturer Airbus to begin development of Cristal.

14/06/2023

Few places experience both the beauty and the fury of California's natural world like South Lake Tahoe. The picturesque city of 21,000, nestled high in the Sierra Nevada mountains and famed for its ski resorts, has endured a wildfire, drought, and now, dangerous amounts of snow - all in a roughly two-year period.

Throughout March, high-altitude storm systems known as atmospheric rivers pummelled South Lake Tahoe during what climate scientists have dubbed a winter for the history books.

The heavy snowfall and precipitation collapsed roofs, closed grocery stores, trapped residents in their homes, and rendered highways impassable. Parts of the region remain under flood advisories that could continue into spring, as the snow is expected to melt with incoming rain and warmer temperatures.

City leaders and climate scientists say that the weather extremes South Lake Tahoe is experiencing portend a dramatic future for the entire state.

08/06/2023

hese will be landed at the same time as the rocket.

Their design will be based on Perseverance's own, highly successful drone, Ingenuity, which has now flown 29 times in Mars' thin atmosphere.

The choppers will be given small wheels that will enable them to move along the ground as well as fly.

"And each of the helicopters will have a little arm that can reach down and grab on to one of the sample tubes that Perseverance will have placed on the surface of Mars," explained Richard Cook, the Mars sample return programme manager at Nasa.

Airbus proposed that it build a small-scale, 20kg rover as the back-up solution, but this suggestion was rejected.

25/05/2023

North Africa's Covid 'black hole'

23/05/2023

Where the sound of nature is too quiet

Lois Allen

13/07/2023

11/07/2023

06/07/2023

03/07/2023

28/06/2023

26/06/2023

21/06/2023

16/06/2023

14/06/2023

08/06/2023

25/05/2023

23/05/2023

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