As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
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Secrets in science
Breakthroughs in machine learning could be used to design new deadly chemicals - how should we respond when scientific information is kept secret in the name of global security, ask ROX MIDDLETON, JOEL HELLEWELL and LIAM SHAW
The third structure of the protein called Pikachurin predicted by the program AlphaFold, July 1 2021
[AlphaFold]
If the government really wanted to address public finances, improve living standards and begin economic recovery, it would increase its borrowing for investment, argues MICHAEL BURKE
MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used
One of Canada’s most revered politicians is a native of Falkirk but is relatively unknown in his original homeland. KENNY MacASKILL tells his story
Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
HENRY FOWLER and ROB POOLE explain the significance of today’s Megapicket
EARLY in Oppenheimer, the protagonist, who led the US atomic bomb development programme during WWII, attempts half-heartedly to poison one of his supervisors by injecting an apple with poisonous chemicals.
As a science student in an experimental lab, he has easy access to these chemicals. As the film explores, these poisonous materials are not the most deadly things that Oppenheimer works with in his life. The Manhattan Project that Oppenheimer and many thousands of others worked on in strict secrecy culminated in the first atomic weapons: two bombs that killed at least 130,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The rationale behind the secrecy was obvious. They were designing the deadliest bomb anyone had ever seen, and trying to do so before the Nazis. Since then, there have been no further uses of atomic bombs in war, although how to build an atomic weapon is no longer secret.
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