The blockbuster videogame launch of Grand Theft Auto V was met with a fanfare of confusing messages. Gamers were promised the familiar diet of salacious content: players are free, so we are told, to drive drunk and exploit sex workers. However, experts tell us that “GTA is essentially the Sopranos of videogames”. Are we being […] … learn more→

The PhD ‘journey’ is a well-used metaphor in student and supervisory circles. Despite its cliché-status, I have always felt a high degree of resonance with it. It is apt to describe so much of my own PhD experience – the need for maps and guides before stepping off into unchartered territory, the exhilaration of meeting […] … learn more→

Between 2007 and mid-2008, world grain and soybean prices more than doubled. As food prices climbed everywhere, some exporting countries began to restrict grain shipments in an effort to limit food price inflation at home.Importing countries panicked. Some tried to negotiate long-term grain supply agreements with exporting countries, but in a seller’s market, few were […] … learn more→

What can two periods of industrialisation nearly two centuries apart tell us about how economies change and the demands their change place on the planet? Today, China leads the wave of emerging economies poised to recast the Western-dominated geopolitical balance. Its development over the past three decades has turned it from a rural backwater – […] … learn more→

In a conversation with a newly retired and highly respected college president late last week, the conversation turned to the growing problem of how to govern American colleges and universities in uncertain times. American higher education operates on a system of shared governance. It is often presented as a 3-leg stool with each leg balancing […] … learn more→

The \”framework agreement\” reached over the weekend between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to identify and destroy chemical weapons in Syria is a positive step in a war to date characterised only by negatives. But it has created a series of new complications for the US. Assuming […] … learn more→

Social media may have done much for the world, but it certainly hasn’t made everyone happy. It’s not just trolls, bullies and pedants: regular customers are annoyed too. Take a glance at the twitter feeds of Northern Rail, or Virgin Trains, for instance. They have the unenviable task of responding to tweets peppered with ire […] … learn more→

Weight gain through adult life is a slow insidious process. Rather than being a gradual weight gain over the year, obesity researchers have now pinpointed the danger zone periods of the year. These shorter danger zone times explain the majority of weight gained by adults each year. For the majority of adults, weight gain throughout […] … learn more→

The path to where the U.S., Russia, and Syria are now—with an initial US/Russia agreement on a plan for disarmament of Assad’s chemical arsenal, to be put before the UNSC — has been idiosyncratic to the point of good comedy. But where they have ended up should be starting to look familiar, and arguably tells […] … learn more→