News & articles

The British pound’s slide in value against the US dollar to less than US$1.15 on March 18, from over US$1.30 at the start of the month, partly reflects a familiar retreat into US assets as the global economy stalls due to the coronavirus panic.

Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, set out a £5 billion boost for buses and cycling in February, promising to make buses more frequent with simpler and more affordable fares. A month later, BBC’s Panorama picked up the issue, highlighting the social and economic cost of bus service cuts over the past decade.

An OU citizen science platform, which allows the public to act as scientists, is one of three projects shortlisted by the Guardian University Awards 2020.

Anyone who engages critically with the phenomenon of conspiracy theories soon encounters a conundrum. Actual conspiracies occur quite regularly. Political assassinations, scandals and cover-ups, terrorist attacks and a lot of everyday government activity involves the collusion of multiple people in the attempt to bring about a desired outcome.

In the five decades since we first started sending spacecraft to Mars, exploration of the red planet has had a poor record of success. It is only in the last few years that we have come to expect that the number of successes greatly outweighs the failures.

An OU academic has fed her research into a campaign on the dangers of mobile phone use while driving, which begins this week (9 March 2020).

OU research into the restoration of UK’s floodplain meadows has just received £132,000 from the John Ellerman Foundation.

A project which allows members of the public to engage with scientific research, has just received further funding.

Open University research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) has received a European Commission grant which provides the planetary space community free access to the world’s largest collection of simulation and analysis facilities.

The UK Government has recently published an Online Harms White Paper: initial consultation response. Dr Olga Jurasz, OU Senior Lecturer of Law and Dr Kim Barker, Lecturer in Law, University of Stirling express their views.