Category: Reading

Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass On 2nd August 199.9, a particularly hot day in the town of Cirencester in the UK, a large pane of toughened glass in the roof of a...

The Impact of Wilderness Tourism  A The market for tourism in remote areas is booming as never before. Countries all across the world are actively promoting their ‘wilderness’ regions – such as mountains, Arctic...

Disappearing Delta  A The fertile land of the Nile delta is being eroded along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at an astounding rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year. In the past, land...

The Birth of Scientific English World science is dominated today by a small number of languages, including Japanese, German and French, but it is English which is probably the most popular global language of...

What’s so funny? John McCrone reviews recent research on humour The joke comes over the headphones: ‘ Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘...

BAKELITE The birth of modem plastics In 1907, Leo Hendrick Baekeland, a Belgian scientist working in New York, discovered and patented a revolutionary new synthetic material. His invention, which he named ‘Bakelite’, was of...

 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out, that the population is...

 Nature or Nurture? A A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for...

 Johnson’s Dictionary For the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no...