Tom Falcon Harding / shutterstock Jan Zalasiewicz, University of Leicester and Mark Williams, University of Leicester Our deficiencies have always driven us, even among our distant ancestors, back in the last Ice Age. Having neither the speed and strength to hunt large prey, nor sharp teeth and claws to tear flesh, we improvised spears, flint knives, scrapers. Lacking a thick …

IAN LANGSDON/EPA Greg Barton, Deakin University and Fethi Mansouri, Deakin University After three people died in a knife attack in Nice this week that French President Emmanuel Macron called an “Islamist terrorist attack”, there was a sense of déjà vu — we have seen this before. Amid the sadness of innocent lives taken in a most horrible fashion, there is …

Marcin Malicki/Shutterstock David Clayton, Nottingham Trent University Intermittent fasting is a way of losing weight that favours flexibility over calorie counting. It restricts the time you are allowed to eat, which reduces calorie intake by limiting opportunities to eat. That’s the theory, at least. A popular version of intermittent fasting is the 5:2 diet, which involves eating a very low-calorie …