Editor's note

Your nose is really weird and so is mine. I learned this week from a Conversation article that our sense of smell is a complex mechanism that we still don’t entirely understand. Our olfactory processes can become tangled, for example, causing us to lose our ability to smell. Sometimes, when you get a cold, that ability just never returns. It just goes to show that great mysteries lie up your nostrils. This and other curious facts about your honker here.

What happens to driving tests when cars can drive themselves? That’s a question I’d never really thought about until this week, when I read this article on the vehicles of the future. It’s not just how individual cars will operate that we need to think about but also all the bits and bobs around the edges, like the test, and the decisions over who gets to drive flying cars. There are some interesting questions to ponder, even for people who aren’t into the tech side of the topic.

There have been some very important developments in Russia this week, where President Vladimir Putin announced plans to radically change the nation’s constitution. At first glance it sort of looked like he was giving himself less power. But that doesn’t sound likely, does it? And sure enough, when we asked an expert to set it all out in easy-to-understand terms, it quickly became clear that Putin is actually finding canny ways to ensure his influence continues.

This week we’ve also been following the monkey, rooting for Little Women and exploring an extraordinary new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London.

Laura Hood

Politics Editor, Assistant Editor

Veres Production/Shutterstock

Six curious facts about smell

Jane Parker, University of Reading

Smell – the strangest of all the senses.

Flying along… Shutterstock

Are self-driving cars safe? Expert on how we will drive in the future

Andrew Morris, Loughborough University

How to get from A to B – in the future.

Vladimir Putin: let’s make these changes. Michael Klimentyev/Sputnik/EPA

Russia’s constitutional changes are designed to perpetuate power of Vladimir Putin’s elite

Richard Sakwa, University of Kent

The seven ways Vladimir Putin wants to change Russia's constitution.

Little Women, the touching story of the four March sisters, received six Oscar nominations. Sony Pictures

Little Women: Greta Gerwig’s direction creates big emotions and deserved an Oscar

James Zborowski, University of Hull

In converging two timelines to retell Little Women, Greta Gerwig's writing and direction create emotions in the audience that made her deserving of an Oscar nomination for direction

Charlotte Solamon’s expansive work told a story over 784 paintings that saw words intermingling with pages of beautifully painted pictures. Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam/ © Charlotte Salomon Foundation/Charlotte Salomon ®

This young woman created 784 paintings while hiding from the Nazis

Emma Parker, University of Leeds

Charlotte Salomon's dizzying work of hope and creativity amid destruction and despair, is a moving early example of the contemporary graphic novel

 

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