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When’s the last time you saw a pundit pause?

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have earned the nickname of forever chemicals from their extraordinary ability to stick around in the environment long after they’ve been used.

Infectious or chronic diseases such as long COVID, Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury can cause inflammation in the brain, or neuroinflammation, that weakens muscles. While scientists are aware of this link between inflammation and muscle weakness, the molecules and processes involved have been unclear.

Much has been made of the news that Reform has overtaken Labour in voting intentions in a recent poll. The poll, produced by market research agency Find Out Now, put the Conservatives on 26%, Reform on 24% and Labour on 23%.

Recent disruption to Britain’s rail network, caused by a fault in its outdated nationwide radio system, was more than just an inconvenience for thousands of commuters. It was a stark reminder of how far the UK has fallen behind in its critical infrastructure.

Artists are generally thought of as either starving in a garret (La Bohème and all that) or jammy millionaires producing works valued at eye-watering sums (hello Damien Hirst). But the reality of life in the visual arts is more prosaic and a great deal more worrying, as the publication of…

In a 1951 letter to the publisher Milton Waldman, J.R.R. Tolkien described his youthful ambition to create a cycle of connected legends, some of which would be tales told in full and others that would exist merely as scraps and fragments.

Dressed in a modest grey suit and tie with a light blue shirt, bald and bearded, 41-year-old Mohammed al-Bashir addressed his fellow Syrians on Tuesday from behind a desk in an empty conference room. Asking for “stability and calm”, he announced that he would serve as the head of a…

Easy, portable and convenient. The latest AI-powered wellbeing and meditation apps may sound like the ideal solution for those looking for peace in a chaotic world, but can an AI app really replace the expertise of a human meditation guide? Not easily.

Name an animal that migrates. You might think of the long migrations of humpback whales crossing the Pacific Ocean or flocks of geese flying noisily overhead. But, did you know that huge numbers of insects make ultra-long migrations of thousands of miles almost completely unseen?

What is it like to move through the world when everyone tries to change who and what you are? This is the fundamental experience that the graphic novel Shrink explores in its stylistic depiction of the author’s autobiographical experience of being fat.