Category Archives: Reviews

Research: New Scientist Magazine – April 8, 2023

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New Scientist – April 8, 2023 issue:

Come explore the quantum realm – it isn’t as confusing as it seems

Quantum particles, quantum computer, galaxy-like ; Shutterstock ID 2194720337; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -

Quantum theory, and the world of subatomic particles and forces it describes, has a daunting reputation for strangeness. And yet, with the right guidance, anyone can enjoy its many wonders

Cancer tumours in mice shrunk thanks to oxygen-sucking battery

A breast cancer tumour in a mouse
Tomography imaging of a breast cancer tumour in a mouse

By consuming oxygen near to tumours, the battery makes a class of experimental drugs target oxygen-free cancerous cells more effectively

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – April 7, 2023

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Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 7, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring the late Jane Maas on Philip Roth’s great love; David Throsby on consulting firms; an extract from The God Desire by @Baddiel; @LamornaAsh on Max Porter; @funesdamemorius on Mike Nelson; a new poem by Carl Dennis – and more.

Foreign Affairs: Haiti – A Violent & Broken Country

FRANCE 24 (April 5, 2023) – The security situation in Haiti has spiralled out of control since the shock assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, with the country increasingly beset by violence. Today, unrest has reached such levels that the United Nations is being urged to intervene and there has been a total breakdown of governance.

Haiti country profile - BBC News

 The country is increasingly at the mercy of criminal gangs and half of the population struggles to find food. FRANCE 24’s team travelled to Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, before gangs took full control of the city. They met a writer, a street vendor and a food importer, as well as residents trying to flee abroad.

Haiti is a Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic to its east. Though it’s still recovering from a 2010 earthquake, many of Haiti’s landmarks dating to the early 19th century remain intact. These include Citadelle la Ferrière, a mountaintop fortress, and the nearby ruins of Sans-Souci Palace, the baroque former royal home of King Henry I. 

Art Exhibitions: ‘Dosso Dossi. The Aeneas Frieze’ At The Galleria Borghese

Dosso Dossi. The Aeneas Frieze

‘Dosso Dossi. The Aeneas Frieze‘

Galleria Borghese – From April 4 to June 11, 2023, the Galleria Borghese brings to fruition its research on landscape painting and the relationship between Art and Nature with Dosso Dossi. The Aeneas Frieze, a never-before-seen exhibition – the first dedicated to the great Ferrarese master’s pictorial cycle-curated by Marina Minozzi.


Dosso Dossi (Giovanni di Nicolò Luteri, Tramuschio ?, c. 1487 – Ferrara, 1542) – The Cretan Plague c. 1520-1521

For the first time, five of the ten canvases that made up the frieze created by Dosso Dossi between 1518 and 1520 for the Camerino d’Alabastro of Duke Alfonso I d’Este in Ferrara are being brought together in a single location. The operation, also prompted by enthusiasm for the recent reappearance of some of these paintings, is the result of an ambitious collaboration with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Dosso Dossi (Giovanni di Nicolò Luteri, Tramuschio ?, c. 1487 – Ferrara, 1542) The Repair of the Trojan Ships;
the Building of the Temple to Venus at Eryx and the Offerings at Anchises’s Grave c. 1518-1519

The Frieze, of which only seven canvases have been found to date, was made by Dosso Dossi drawing inspiration from specific episodes of the Virgilian poem taken from the first, third, fifth and sixth books, leaving out, however, the part devoted to the hero’s love story with Dido, that of the wars in Italy and the founding of Rome.

Climate Change: 10 Foods That Keep Getting Pricier

Insider Business (April 4, 2023) – Purple flowers in Kashmir produce the world’s most expensive spice — saffron. While it can sell for $10,000 per kilogram, climate change is making it even more expensive. Because of lower-than-usual rainfall over the last few years, production has dropped significantly.

And fields that once yielded this delicate spice have become sites for new housing construction. Climate change is threatening the production of all kinds of foods from cloves in India to eels in Japan and Spain. Here are 10 expensive, and vulnerable, foods and why climate change is making them so much more expensive.

Preview: Banshee Literary Journal – Spring 2023

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Banshee Literary Journal – Spring/Summer 2023:

Issue 15 features poetry from @el_fodongo, Elizabeth McGeown, @JamieOHallo108, @MNSghost, @AnneTannam, @hmorganvl, @crownofpetals, @dogwithoutlegs, @yopopodawn and Derek JG Williams.

Design Exhibitions: 2023 Salone Del Mobile, Milan

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Salone del Mobile 2023

18 to 23 April

This spring, as we leave behind the slow and cautious post-pandemic recovery, the spotlight returns to Milan for a thrilling edition of Milan Design Week that marks 2023 as a year of renewal, especially in the world of design.

Technology Preview: AI Magazine April 2023

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AI Magazine – April 2023 Issue:

Experts call on AI support for latest cybersecurity battles

Game changer: How AI is powering the future of development

Preview: London Review Of Books – April 13, 2023

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London Review of Books (LRB) – April 13, 2023 issue:

Let’s go to Croydon – Jonathan Meades

Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain

Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain By John Grindrod Cover Image

Its appeal is part of the recurrent cycle of the centripetal giving way to the lure of the burbs. Save that, in this instance, it’s not the lure that accounts for an invasion of beards and craft beer but the unaffordability of housing in East London. Let’s go to Croydon! For want of anywhere else.

Rewriting the Marcos Years – Sheila S. Coronel

Which archival sources are used and whose voices are silenced? The Marcoses have – for now – claimed the archive and seized the narrative. They tell the story of a golden age followed by a fall and a quest for redemption. In the Philippines, a deeply Catholic country, the story has a satisfying narrative arc.

Arts/Culture: Humanities Magazine – Spring 2023

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Humanities Magazine – Spring 2023 Issue

Audubon in This Day and Age

The artist and his birds continue to challenge us

John James Audubon, dead for 172 years, has been in the news again. Disturbing facts known to his biographers—that, for example, when he kept a store in Henderson, Kentucky, he enslaved people—have gained new currency, although the National Audubon Society has, for now, held on to its name. For many, Audubon has become synonymous with an activity—call it science, ornithology, natural history, birding, love of the outdoors—that has, for the longest time, excluded people of color.  

A Lot of What Is Known about Pirates Is Not True, and a Lot of What Is True Is Not Known.

In 1701, in Middletown, New Jersey, Moses Butterworth languished in a jail, accused of piracy. Like many young men based in England or her colonies, he had joined a crew that sailed the Indian Ocean intent on plundering ships of the Muslim Mughal Empire. Throughout the 1690s, these pirates marauded vessels laden with gold, jewels, silk, and calico on pilgrimage toward Mecca. After achieving great success, many of these men sailed back into the Atlantic via Madagascar to the North American seaboard, where they quietly disembarked in Charleston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Newport, and Boston, and made themselves at home.