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What do tests tell us?
Education & Development

What do tests tell us?

...world then international comparisons of tests are becoming more important to parents and young people – as well as governments. One of the ideas put forward in the series is that school students in Britain are ‘3 years behind’ China, particularly in maths. What does this mean? What is it based on? How helpful is it? International comparisons based on tests have to...
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Article 10 mins
Did Waterloo prevent a fresh Anglo-American war?
History & The Arts

Did Waterloo prevent a fresh Anglo-American war?

...world. But for the vast magnitude of those changes which have occurred in the immediate vicinity of this country, our most serious consideration would have been attracted by what has occurred on the other side of the Atlantic. Under other circumstances, we should have seen with uneasiness and sorrow (alarm is out of the question), the unfriendly, or rather the decidedly...
View article Did Waterloo prevent a fresh Anglo-American war?
Article 10 mins
Oliver Sacks: "Romantic, in the sense of the romantic poets"
Health, Sports & Psychology

Oliver Sacks: "Romantic, in the sense of the romantic poets"

...world. Despite Sacks’s popularity now, he had a slow start, with his first book Migrainenot raising much interest either with his medical colleagues or the reading public. Not least, perhaps, because compared to his later works, it struggled to throw off some of the technical writing habits of academic medicine. It wasn’t until his 1973 book Awakenings that he became...
View article Oliver Sacks: "Romantic, in the sense of the romantic poets"
Article 5 mins
Do sperm whales speak with local accents?
Science, Maths & Technology

Do sperm whales speak with local accents?

...world. One thing that has always struck me is that while these dolphins tend to do the same thing – such as hunt fish or play together – the way they do this can differ quite drastically between populations. In the late 1990s, Andy Whiten best articulated this “feeling” that field biologists have had for a long time in his study of chimpanzees, the first...
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Article 5 mins
A future for languages in schools?
Languages

A future for languages in schools?

...World Service (a transcript is available by clicking here). The second keynote of the day was a varied and often humorous speech delivered by Oliver Miles, former British Ambassador to Libya, Luxembourg and Greece, about his life as a serial language-learner. Delegates also heard from Kathryn Board and Teresa Tinsley – authors of the British Council and CfBT’s...
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Article 5 mins
How Volkswagen got caught cheating emissions tests by a clean air NGO
Science, Maths & Technology

How Volkswagen got caught cheating emissions tests by a clean air NGO

...world experience of many car owners, even in terms of fuel consumption, did not come anywhere near to the official figures that resulted from emissions testing. The question arises of why it takes underfunded NGOs to discover these problems, rather than the regulators themselves. It is also unclear whether this technique was only used to deal with the particularly tight...
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Article 10 mins
Professor Andrew Watson - Stories of Change
Nature & Environment

Professor Andrew Watson - Stories of Change

...world think we’ll go much beyond that. AW: There is a risk. It simplifies and oversimplifies the debate, because if you concentrate, for example, on the average rise in temperature, that’s not actually very significant. It’s not what causes the climate impacts, which is more the change in extremes, changes in things other than temperature such as precipitation,...
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Audio 5 mins
First, they came for the Marmite... but what next as the pound falls?
Money & Business

First, they came for the Marmite... but what next as the pound falls?

...world. Cross-border commercial contracts specify the currency in which payments are due to be made. What happens, however, when the value of the specified currency changes drastically and the amount to be paid no longer reflects the value of the goods to be supplied? To return to the recent headlines, Unilever, the owner of Marmite, produces a number of products overseas...
View article First, they came for the Marmite... but what next as the pound falls?
Article 5 mins