By William Austin, University of St Andrews This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. “The science we need for the ocean we want” – this is the tagline for the UN Ocean Decade (2021-2030), which has just held its first conference in Barcelona, Spain. Marine scientists from around the world, including me, gathered alongside global leaders to chart the progress of this ten-year mission to improve ocean health and marine biodiversity. That includes finding ways to better protect the seabed which we still know relatively little a ..read more

By Chloe Fox-Robertson, University of Manchester and Dariusz Wojcik, National University of Singapore This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Fintech (financial technology) is everywhere. It’s the catch-all term for technology-enabled financial services innovation. Even if you haven’t heard of fintech, you’re probably using it for payments, banking or investments. Klarna? ClearPay? Revolut? Monzo? They’re all part of an industry that attracted a staggering US$51.2 billion (£40.5 billion) of investment globally in 2023. Howe ..read more

By Richard Harris, University of Bristol This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. If you’re not a die-hard numbers person, government statistics can often go right over your head. That is, unless the data is easy to access and directly speaks to your everyday life. A new online service from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) aims to facilitate just that. Launched in March 2024, the Explore Local Statistics service collates 57 local measurements, across topics ranging from health and school results to smoking and i ..read more

By Richard Washington, University of Oxford This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Some years ago, I found myself making my way up the narrow stairs of a Learjet on a sultry runway in a deserted airport near the South Africa-Mozambique border. The humidity was there to taste – the air thick with it. The weather radar was showing a fast-developing thundercloud. Our mission was to fly through the most active part of the storm, measure it, fly through again while dumping a bin load of dry ice, turn hard and fly through for a ..read more

By David Thomas, University of Oxford This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The Dune films remind us of just how beautiful, mysterious, expansive and changeable sand dunes can be. For centuries these wonderful landforms have filled humans with awe – and in some cases fear and foreboding – because of the apparent remoteness and risks associated with the deserts they are synonymous with. That’s what first attracted me to research deserts and dunes more than 40 years ago, and I have been investigating them ever since. Here a ..read more

By Victoria J E Jones, Northumbria University, Newcastle This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Between March 2020 and September 2021, millions of workers furloughed under the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme lived what for many of us is a dream: being paid not to work. Through interviews, I’ve researched the impact of this time on 35 people who were furloughed under the scheme. I found that for some, furlough created opportunities for reflection and growth, but for most of my interviewees it was a time of ..read more

By Kevin Collins, The Open University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. An international subcommittee of geologists recently voted to reject a proposal to make the Anthropocene an official new geological epoch, defined by humanity’s enormous impact on the planet. Assuming some protests do not overturn the ruling, it will now take another decade for the decision to be reviewed. That may seem a long time given climate change concerns, but it is of course far less than a blink in planetary terms. The Earth can certainly ..read more

By Doug Specht, University of Westminster There are currently 32 active conflicts raging around the world. While bullets and bombs are the immediate instruments of destruction, maps also play a significant role in shaping conflict. Maps, although apparently objective representations of terrain, can be twisted into instruments of dehumanisation and strategic manipulation, fuelling the flames of conflict. Maps have played an especially cruel role in the creation and now destruction of Gaza. Palestine was drawn on a map at the end the First World War. The portion of the territory t ..read more

By Oli Mould, Royal Holloway University of London This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s breakthrough cinematic masterpiece, Drive My Car (2021), won him deserved critical acclaim. The film is a feat of storytelling that beautifully juxtaposes the enormity of grief with the everyday mundane. His new film, Evil Does Not Exist, is equally powerful in its use of juxtaposition. However, here he is tackling the thorny issues of gentrification (where wealthier people move in and displace and price locals out ..read more

By Edward C Hixson, the @one Alliance The context Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD), also known as Colour Blindness, is a common variation in humans that can lead to difficulties in distinguishing colours. It is predicted that three million people in Britain are colour blind, roughly 4.5% of the population. There are three different types of CVD –  protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia – which all act slightly differently. Of these, the most common is deuteranopia which affects the perception of red and green. It is key that we understand and adapt our work within the GIS profession to mak ..read more