Category: Features

On 3 August 1958, the commander of the world’s first nuclear submarine made an extraordinary, if somewhat tongue in cheek, entry in his logbook: “Embarked following personage at North Pole…” wrote USS Nautilus commander William Anderson, “…Santa Claus, affiliation: Christmas.” It was the final sentence of a celebratory record of...

In a tranquil side room of the Covid-19 vaccination centre in Rambouillet, a small French town around 30 miles (50km) south-west of Paris, a soft blue light emanated from a row of cylindrical tubes. Members of the public who received a vaccine last year were invited to bathe in the...

As a neighbouring country, we know very little about Myanmar. The media of our country covers only the political issues of that country. Thanks to the political instability, it is not a popular tourist destination, although there are some long and beautiful sandy beaches. In this article, we are trying...

The onset of spring brings relief in more ways than one to Delhi. The air is cool and crisp, and with the milder weather come light showers that make the vegetation more lush. Around April, south-westerly winds sweep through the region, and the blanket of acrid smog that covers the...

During Ramadan we celebrate the Qur’an. This is fitting owing to the close association between the month of fasting and the Qur’an. Allah  mentions in the Qur’an, The month of Ramadan in which the Qur’an was revealed (2:185). Perhaps this association is connected to the fact that during the month we...

Tiny bits of plastic, or microplastics, have been showing up all over the globe. As they move through the environment, some of these pieces can wind up contaminating food or water. That’s been a concern, because many of these plastic pieces pick up toxic pollutants, only to later release them....

For centuries, indigenous groups in Meghalaya of India have crafted intricate bridges from living fig trees. Now this ancient skill is making its way to European cities. In the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, just above the Sylhet division of Bangladesh, there lies a village named Tyrna. It is very...

Earthen piles built by a chicken-like bird in Australia aren’t just egg incubators — they may also be crucial for the distribution of key nutrients throughout the ecosystem. In the dry woodlands of South Australia, sandy mounds rise between patches of many-stemmed “mallee” eucalyptus trees. These monuments — big enough...

I was seven years old when I started to learn to read, as is typical of the alternative Steiner school I attended. My own daughter attends a standard English school, and started at four, as is typical in most British schools. Watching her memorise letters and sound out words, at...

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha There is only one time and place where you can be and have any control over. The present moment. But most of us still spend a lot of our...

The first time that Marcus Maeder stuck a noise sensor into the ground, it was on a whim. A sound artist and acoustic ecologist, he was sitting in a mountain meadow and pushed a special microphone he’d built into the soil. “I was just curious,” says Maeder, who is working...

In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a 9.1 magnitude undersea quake off Indonesia decimated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, killing at least 225,000 people across a dozen countries. The huge death toll was in part caused by the fact that many communities received no warning. Local manmade early warning...

Ana Morales stepped through the shrubbery, scanning the airwaves with a radio receiver. The device had picked up a signal from a transmitter that she and colleagues had previously attached to a Swainson’s thrush, a small brown and white speckled bird native to the Americas. The same signal had popped...

Just off the north coast of Northern Ireland, in the chilly waters of the Atlantic, lies a tiny, L-shaped island called Rathlin. It is home to around 160 people. Mains electricity only arrived on Rathlin in the early 1990s, with the construction of three wind turbines. One islander enthused to...

For two days riots raged in Estonia’s capital Tallinn. Protestors clashed with police and looters rampaged after the violence was sparked by controversy about a decision to move a military statue erected during Soviet rule. The flames of outrage among Estonia’s Russian-speaking minority were fanned by false news spreading online...

When a heavy storm hit in October, residents of the floating community of Schoonschip in Amsterdam had little doubt they could ride it out. They tied up their bikes and outdoor benches, checked in with neighbours to ensure everyone had enough food and water, and hunkered down as their neighborhood...

Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative is a proposed 8,000-kilometer line of trees meant to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward. New climate simulations looking to both the region’s past and future suggest this greening could have a profound effect on the climate of northern Africa, and even beyond. By...