Author: lauraspinney
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The modern foundling wheel
WHEN Romina discovered she was pregnant in 2021, she was 39 years old and homeless, without a euro to her name. She did what many a lonely and frightened woman has done throughout history, on learning that she was going to have a baby, and pretended she wasn’t. “If you don’t think about it, it…
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Childcare issues
THE story of human evolution has undergone a distinct feminisation in recent decades. Or, rather, an equalisation: a much-needed rebalancing after 150 years during which, we were told, everything was driven by males strutting, brawling and shagging, with females just along for the ride. This reckoning has finally arrived at language… This article first appeared…
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Wonder women
THE young man, no older than 25, had gone to the afterlife with an opulent assortment of grave goods, including an entire elephant tusk. Archaeologists who excavated his 5000-year-old remains in 2008 from a site near Seville, Spain, dubbed him the “Ivory Man” and suggested that he might have been the most important person on…
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Science on the catwalk
IRIS van Herpen leads photographer Ilvy Njiokiktjien and me into a cluttered storeroom and I shut the door. “Ooh!” we gasp, as we gaze at a board that van Herpen holds up in the darkness. Outside the room, the board looked much like a child’s glue painting, with silicone piping arranged on it in a…
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Should babies vote?
TWO years ago, Alisa Perales sued California and the US government because they wouldn’t let her vote. The academically gifted Perales, who was eight years old at the time, argued that the rule excluding under-18s from democracy, which is enshrined in the US constitution, amounted to age discrimination… This article first appeared in The Guardian on…
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How migrants shape language
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by
ABOUT 5,000 years ago, a group of herders living in the grasslands north of the Black Sea headed west, taking their animals with them. They got as far as the Carpathian Basin — the western extremity of the vast Eurasian steppe centered on modern Hungary — but their descendants pushed farther, and within 1,000 years…
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Could English ever die?
GIVEN that a staggering 1,500 languages could vanish by the end of this century, by some estimates – close to a quarter of the world’s total – some may find it obscene to even ask this question. English is certainly not on the endangered list. As the one truly global language, it is more often…
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Forensic science’s identity crisis
WHEN does context become bias? It’s a question that engenders anxiety in many scientific disciplines, and with good reason. Information about a patient’s family history may nudge a doctor towards the right diagnosis, or tip them towards a wrong one. Awareness of a suspect’s criminal past may help an investigator read a crime scene correctly,…
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Multilingual world
AS the chancellor searches for ways to stimulate growth, here’s a reminder to her – on the International Day of Multilingualism – that she’s sitting on a huge pot of gold. In 2014, the all-party parliamentary group on modern languages estimated that the UK’s untapped linguistic potential was worth£48bn. It’s £8bn more than Reeves added…
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Mythology-ology
ONCE upon a time, a strong, attractive hero lost one or both of his parents. He then overcame a series of obstacles and faced off against a monster that had terrorised his community. The hero vanquished the monster and was celebrated… This article first appeared in New Scientist on 11 March 2025. To continue reading, click here…