3,400 search results

The frozen planet
Nature & Environment

The frozen planet

...source of almost all the energy reaching the Earth’s surface is the Sun. (There is some heat energy flow from the interior of the Earth to the surface, but the amount is small compared with the solar contribution.) The incoming energy is transmitted across space by solar radiation (the Sun’s rays), and when it reaches the Earth it is transferred to its surface, or to...
Level 1: Introductory 7 hrs
Living psychology: animal minds
Health, Sports & Psychology

Living psychology: animal minds

...Open University course DD210 Living psychology: from the everyday to the extraordinary. A note on ‘human’ and ‘animal’ differentiation in this course While humans are, of course, animals, for the purposes of this course the term ‘animal’ will be used to refer to non-human species, in order to allow a clear distinction between human and non-human mental...
Level 2: Intermediate 12 hrs
How are scientists testing for the growth of antibiotic resistance?
Health, Sports & Psychology

How are scientists testing for the growth of antibiotic resistance?

...sources of carbon and nitrogen; in this case inactivation (resistance) is really just digestion. Perhaps bacteriocins, if not antibiotics, exist not to help bacteria but rather to ensure their own survival. In an experiment published in 2013, Inglis and colleagues showed that bacteriocins can act primarily as selfish genetic elements promoting their own transmission in...
Brexit and health care professionals
Health, Sports & Psychology

Brexit and health care professionals

...source of labour that is trained in UK-compatible standards and practices The opposite side of this is also true. The mutual recognition of qualifications policy and the fitness to practise reciprocal arrangements currently allow for UK trained health care professionals to work within the EU. Post-Brexit this may not be the case, if these systems are not maintained or...
For older people, the storms might abate but the harm persists
Health, Sports & Psychology

For older people, the storms might abate but the harm persists

...sources to try to draw conclusions about the impacts of disasters. Disaster preparedness tips for older residents from the New York City Office of Emergency Management. Long-lasting effects I recently conducted a study that examined hospitalizations among older adults after a 2011 tornado outbreak that spawned hundreds of tornadoes throughout Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi...
Irish Women’s Poetry: Eavan Boland
OpenLearn Ireland

Irish Women’s Poetry: Eavan Boland

...source’ and show how politics seeps into our personal, domestic lives (Boland, ‘A Question’, 2000). Aged 26, she wrote ‘The War Horse’ (1975) and later described it as ‘my first political poem’. Trampling suburbia, the horse is a ‘rumour of war’: he maims and uproots plants ‘Like corpses’. He resembles a paramilitary ‘volunteer’. Boland is very...
Sacrificial Metals
Science, Maths & Technology

Sacrificial Metals

...source – wave power or sunlight. Rough Scientist Mikey B was given the challenge of stopping the wire rusting over time. He decided to use a lump of magnesium as a sacrificial electrode. To find out more about how magnesium stops iron rusting and how it is used to protect oil drilling platforms and boats, read this extract from the second level OU course Our Chemical...
Does fiction make people more empathic and is that a good thing?
History & The Arts

Does fiction make people more empathic and is that a good thing?

...source of variation in how people engage with stories (for more on the case for exploring other media, see Turner, in press). So, assuming we get there, and start to identify how fiction – its mechanisms and moderators – can influence different facets of empathy, is this something we would want to cultivate in the real world? Is increasing people’s empathy by...