We’ve moved our blogs back to keele.ac.uk. An archive of blogs will remain here on Medium, but future blogs from October 2022 will be hosted on the main University website, as well as expert comment blogs on The Conversation UK. You can read expert comments here > You can read new student blogs here > We’ve moved our blogs was originally published in Keele University on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story ..read more

Keele’s Dr Sharon George offers tips on how to beat the heat, without contributing to further climate change. As temperatures in the UK soar and records are broken, we are reminded that climate change is pushing temperatures and our weather to extremes. Hotter, drier summers are becoming more likely and so it makes sense to think about how to prepare for a heatwave, both now and in the future. Air conditioning, while convenient, and pleasantly cooling, uses a lot of energy. A rise in outdoor temperatures increases energy use from air conditioning producing more greenhouse gases, whi ..read more

Shutterstock Image ID: 1361068466 A blog post written by Dr Kate Lillie, Lecturer in Adult Nursing at Keele University, and Harjinder Kaur-Aujla and Dr Chris Wagstaff from the University of Birmingham. “Grief and loss continue to be a major part of the experience of Covid for many people, but much of the focus has been on those whose relatives died and whose mourning was affected by legal restrictions on intermingling (including hospital visiting) and restricted numbers at funerals: In the UK these losses were epitomised by the photograph of the Queen sitting alone at the funeral of her husban ..read more

A blog post by Dr Abigail Pearson, Lecturer in Law at Keele University. Shutterstock.com “For many weeks now there have been veiled references to the Queen’s state of health, hardly surprising at the age of 96, recently bereaved and having had her family’s behaviour dragged across newspaper front pages for the last 60 years at least. However, recently reports seem to be focusing on why the Queen has not been seen in public or has cancelled several engagements at short notice. Speculation began to surface from the great and the good, including Giles Brandreth and Christopher Biggins, that ..read more

Julia Ardaran / Shutterstock “Hello! I’m Alana Wheat, interim Sustainability Project Officer working in Keele University’s Sustainability Team. I help support sustainability activities and projects across the campus. This Earth Day, I’m excited to share with you some tips on how you can be more sustainable whilst on campus at Keele University. Sustainability is about meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. Although this may seem like a massive task, it isn’t possible without small steps from individuals. Remember, it isn’t just about ‘going green’, i ..read more

Lia Koltyrina/Shutterstock Dr Jacco van Loon writes for The Conversation. Can we terraform other planets so that the human race can spread around the Solar System? — Xander, aged 14, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Of the eight planets in the Solar System, we live on Earth, and for good reasons. It has the perfect conditions for life. Right now, though, we are sculpting Earth’s surface by deforestation, and changing its atmosphere by adding carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. These changes have resulted in global warming, which might lead us to worry that in the future, Earth m ..read more

The ‘new’ offences added to the online safety bill are not really new — and could continue to fail victims of online abuse Dr Laura Higson-Bliss writes for The Conversation. The UK government has recently revealed more detail about its ambitious plans to become the “safest place in the world to go online” by way of the online safety bill. The draft bill is currently being reviewed by the government following a report by the joint committee, with the bill expected to go before parliament in the coming months. Among a range of measures, the online safety bill is set to include th ..read more

Dr Tolu Olarewaju from Keele Business School, and Temitayo Olarewaju from the University of British Columbia, write for The Conversation. Ethnic minority groups have suffered the highest risk of COVID mortality in the UK, according to the latest official figures. In the first wave (before the vaccine roll-out), the risk of death was highest for those with a black African background. During the second and third waves, it was consistently highest among those with Bangladeshi origins. Those high levels of risk are partly to do with where people live and how they earn a living. Members of ethnic ..read more

Disappeared: relatives protest at the headquarters of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Bogota, Colombia, August 2021. EPA-EFE/Mauricio Duenas Castaneda Dr Jamie Pringle, Dr Vivienne Heaton, and Dr Kris Wisniewski, write for The Conversation UK, alongside Professor Carlon Martín Molina and Dr Alejandra Baena, Universidad Antonio Nariño. In most Latin American countries where there has been a high level of civil conflict over the past few decades, there are still huge numbers of missing people due to forced disappearances. In Colombia alone this number is estimated to be more than 120 ..read more

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