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6 articles from Guardian Unlimited Science

A Special School makes for a TV treat | Brief letters

SEN success | Double your rubbish | Easy peeler | Mouse fathers | Wheely wild words | Concentric curlsAs recent WhatsApp messages showed our government’s contempt for teachers (Report, 2 March), I doubt if any past or present education secretary watched A Special School on BBC Two. It showed what can be achieved for SEN pupils with decent funding, outstanding leadership and dedicated teamwork....

My passion for the seven small objects at the heart of everything we build

From a ball point pen to a skyscraper, everything we make needs one or more of these design wondersWhen I was about five years old, I was living with my parents and sister in snowy upstate New York. It was the 1980s and one day I sat in front of my favourite large rectangular lunchbox, adorned with a picture of the Muppets on the front. This one held my huge collection of crayons – long, short,...

Florida surgeon general’s Covid vaccine claims harm public, health agencies say

‘Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines effort’ to protect lives, warns letter to Dr Joseph Ladapo sent by FDA and CDCUS health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, warning that his claims about Covid-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.The letter was sent to Joseph Ladapo on Friday by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control...

Keep scientists in the research room and out of politics | Fiona Fox

The simple messaging favoured by media advisers doesn’t chime with a discipline that is messy and incompleteMatt Hancock’s views about the independent experts advising government, detailed in the Lockdown Files, are revealing. They were “totally unreliable” and “wacky” (Dame Kate Bingham); a “totally offside… loudmouth” (Sir Jeremy Farrar); and a “prize idiot” (Prof Jon...

How to read the news like a mathematician – from the budget and HS2 to Covid and sport

With the public facing an ever-increasing barrage of sums, calculations and data, here are some numerical tricks and ideas that can help people make better sense of the world These days, keeping up with the news can sometimes feel like a maths exam. We face a constant barrage of figures, whether through national budgets, coronavirus data, hospital waiting lists or football transfer fees. It can be...

Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser shortages loom

Excessive use of phosphorus is depleting reserves vital to global food production, while also adding to the climate crisisOur planet faces “phosphogeddon”, scientists have warned. They fear our misuse of phosphorus could lead to deadly shortages of fertilisers that would disrupt global food production.At the same time, phosphate fertiliser washed from fields – together with sewage inputs...