Many African democracies have been pressing on with new election technologies that leave other countries’ traditional paper-based methods in the dust. As a new generation of technocratic young leaders prepares to take the helm, Stephen Chan charts a course for better, smarter ways of monitoring elections across the continent.
Ever wondered why your sleep patterns and body clock are so unique? Turns out it’s all in your genes, a discovery that earned a trio of scientists the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Sally Ferguson explains how the laureates unlocked the secrets of the molecular cogs and wheels that keep our biological clocks turning. Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to another trio who detected gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space itself. Ed Daw shares his thoughts on what lies behind the success of one of the laureates – his friend
Rainer Weiss.
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An election observer from the British High Commission in Nairobi.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
Stephen Chan, SOAS, University of London
African democracies are embracing electronic voting far more confidently than the West.
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Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael W. Young have been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
EPA/Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sally Ferguson, CQUniversity Australia
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered how our internal body clock works.
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This year’s winners.
Illustration by N. Elmehed. NobelPrize.org
Ed Daw, University of Sheffield
Razor-sharp, unconventional and fun on the dance floor. A colleague paints a colourful portrait of one of this year's Nobel Laureates in physics.
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Politics + Society
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Philip Cook, Duke University
While mass shooting tragedies in Las Vegas and elsewhere make headlines, the reality is gun violence is becoming almost routine in many American neighborhoods. Where do the guns come from?
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Arts + Culture
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Alice Aterianus-Owanga, University of Lausanne
Rap has become instrumental in constructing identity and radically reshaping relations to politics in Gabon and other African states.
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Business + Economy
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Simon Chadwick, University of Salford
The football club has long been central to Catalan identity and is central to the region's independence vote.
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Peter Holmes, University of Sussex; Michael Gasiorek, University of Sussex
Crunching the numbers on 14 years of trading shows one of the assumptions about global markets is looking fragile.
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Environment + Energy
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Clothilde Emilie Langlais, CSIRO; Andrew Lenton, CSIRO; Scott Heron, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Regional variations in sea temperature can make all the difference between a coral reef suffering major bleaching or surviving as a refuge for corals, new research shows.
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