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Is democracy having a mid-life crisis?
Democracy isn't dying, but it is having a very unpredictable mid-life crisis.
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Should women be spelt womxn?
Womxn - to the untrained eye it may look like a typo. But when the Wellcome Collection - a museum and library in London - sent a tweet promoting an event using the word it led to a Twitter backlash from hundreds of women, and an apology from the organisation.
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Quantum mechanics rule 'bent' in classic experiment
Researchers have bent one of the most basic rules of quantum mechanics, a counterintuitive branch of physics that deals with atomic-scale interactions. Its "complementarity" rule asserts that it is impossible to observe light behaving as both a wave and a particle, though it is strictly both.
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Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web
The story that broke early last month that Google would again cooperate with Chinese authorities to run a censored version of its search engine, something the tech giant has neither confirmed nor denied, had ironic timing.
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1965
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on.
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Pacific castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga 'mulled suicide'
A castaway who says he spent 13 months lost in the Pacific told reporters he thought about killing himself twice, despairing from "hunger and thirst".In an interview to CNN Mexico, Jose Salvador Alvarenga said fear was what stopped him from suicide.
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Ancient Egypt: Cheese discovered in 3,200-year-old tomb
image copyrightUniversity of Catania and Cairo UniversityA substance found by archaeologists working in an Ancient Egyptian tomb has proved to be one of the oldest cheeses ever discovered.Several years ago, the team discovered broken jars in the tomb of Ptahmes, a high-ranking Egyptian official.
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Ancient Egyptian mummification 'recipe' revealed
Examination of a mummy has revealed the original ancient Egyptian embalming recipe - first used to preserve bodies. The Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, is now home to the mummy in question.
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Particles point way for Nasa's Voyager
Scientists working on Voyager 1 are receiving further data suggesting the probe is close to crossing into interstellar space. The Nasa mission, which launched from Earth in 1977, could leave our Solar System at any time.
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Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet
Over 1 million Webmentions will have been sent across the internet since the specification was made a full Recommendation by the W3C—the standards body that guides the direction of the web—in early January 2017.
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Decoupled Drupal 8 + GatsbyJS: a quickstart guide
If you're not familiar with GatsbyJS, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's an up and coming static site generator with React and GraphQL baked in, and it prides itself on being really easy to integrate with common CMS'es like Drupal.
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Nigerians lured to work in Italy
In just a few minutes driving along a road on the outskirts of Milan in northern Italy, we counted 20 women, almost all African, standing by the kerb. It was a cold night, but you wouldn't have guessed it from the outfits they were wearing. I used to have sex with many different men.
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Nude model's Western Wall photo shoot sparks anger
Marisa Papen posted the image of herself reclining naked on a rooftop overlooking the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The rabbi of the site described the incident as "grave and lamentable".
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The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the Inkas’ 3D records
The Inka empire (1400-1532 CE) is one of few ancient civilisations that speaks to us in multiple dimensions. Instead of words or pictograms, the Inkas used khipus – knotted string devices – to communicate extraordinarily complex mathematical and narrative information.
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Early Van Gogh landscape sells for €7m at French auction
An early landscape painting by Vincent Van Gogh has sold for €7m (£6.2m; $8.3m) at an auction in Paris. Painted in 1882, Fishing Net Menders in the Dunes depicts peasant women working on the land, inspired by countryside around The Hague in the Netherlands.
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Tales from the far-flung Faroes
When it comes to remote, the Faroe Islands has it all. Tucked between Norway and Iceland, in the dark waters of the North Atlantic, the 18 tiny islands are home to a population of just over 50,000.
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US preacher asks followers to help buy fourth private jet
image copyrightGetty ImagesA US televangelist has asked his followers to help fund his fourth private jet - because Jesus "wouldn't be riding a donkey".Jesse Duplantis said God had told him to buy a Falcon 7X for $54m (£41m).
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Space cadets taken in by TV hoax
Three contestants have spoken of their disbelief after being fooled into thinking they went into space for the UK reality show Space Cadets. The three believed they had blasted off from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia, but were in fact in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.
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The future of web development is here.
There’s a reason why the world’s top-performing website teams use Gatsby. Whether your site has 100 pages or 100,000 pages—we’re obsessed with delivering dynamic web experiences with performance and security that scales.
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Do more people believe in God in Trump's America?
US Vice-President Mike Pence has said "faith in America is rising once again" - thanks to President Donald Trump. America's religious climate has shifted in recent years, but has it been in the direction Mr Pence suggests?
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'Ground-breaking' galaxy collision detected
Scientists have detected a cosmic "pileup" of galaxies in the early Universe. Imaged almost at the boundary of the observable Universe, the 14 unusually bright objects are on a collision course, set to form one massive galaxy.
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Battle of Waterloo reenactment
The Battle of Waterloo reenactment is an annual modern recreation of the 19th century Battle of Waterloo on the original battlefield in Waterloo, Belgium. It is held every June on the weekend nearest to the historic date of the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815).
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Exorcism: Vatican course opens doors to 250 priests
The Vatican has opened its doors for its annual exorcism course amid increasing demand among some of the world's Catholic communities.
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List of scholarly publishing stings
This is a list of scholarly publishing "sting operations" such as the Sokal affair. These are nonsense papers that were accepted by an academic journal or academic conference; the list does not include cases of scientific misconduct.
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‘I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldn’t read or write’
John Corcoran grew up in New Mexico in the US during the 1940s and 50s. One of six siblings, he graduated from high school, went on to university, and became a teacher in the 1960s - a job he held for 17 years. But, as he explains here, he hid an extraordinary secret.
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