Why are there so many different kinds of animals and plants on Earth? One of biology’s big questions is how new species arise and how nature’s incredible diversity came to be.Cichlid fish from Lake Malawi in East Africa offer a clue. In this single lake, over 800 different species have evolved from a common ancestor in a fraction of the time it took for humans and chimpanzees to evolve from…
Today, Jeniffer Ramnath spearheads innovation in her role as chief digital and information officer at the Mastercard Foundation (the Foundation), which works to advance education and financial inclusion for young people in Africa. However, she hasn’t forgotten her humble beginnings as a call center agent in a bustling, unfamiliar Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province—nor what it takes to break through in an industry that often privileges men over women.…
Diego Kagurabadza grew up in Long Beach, California, a large coastal city near Los Angeles. It’s known as “The International City” because of its global imports and diverse population. “I was really lucky to be exposed to a variety of cultures and backgrounds,” said Kagurabadza. “That’s definitely informed my development, growth, and how I approach the world.” Kagurabadza – whose father is from Zimbabwe and mother is from Mexico – loved the…
Quick Hits The Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplace Act requires most Nebraska employers to provide earned paid sick time, starting October 1, 2025. On June 5, 2025, Nebraska Governor Pillen signed a bill that clarifies and amends the Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplace Act. On November 5, 2024, Nebraska voters overwhelmingly approved Nebraska Initiative 436 (also known as the Healthy Families and Workplace Act), which requires employers to begin providing…
The proposed changes would allow electricity distributors to earn a Margin on Payments (MoP) of up to 25 per cent of the payments made to DER providers. The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) is proposing amendments to the Distribution System Code to accelerate the use of third-party distributed energy resources (DERs) as non-wires solutions (NWSs) in Ontario. The proposed changes would allow electricity distributors to earn a Margin on Payments (MoP)…
“In search funds, we get similar or better returns at a fraction of the risk we take on in VC portfolios,” says José Martín Cabiedes, a seasoned VC and search fund investor. “We buy healthy businesses with leverage. The beauty is that even if enterprise value remains flat, strong cash flow can double equity in just a few years. Try doing that in VC.”Put another way, search funds buy profitability and stable cash flows whereas VC trades in the…
The UK has a rare chance to show that inclusive prosperity, affordable homes, public health and ecological integrity can advance together. Realising that promise will depend on converting headline pledges into well-funded, nature-positive projects on the ground. Until that happens, support for the living systems underpinning the economy is likely to remain below the level that science and economics indicate is essential for durable growth, resilience and levelling-up.Professor Nathalie Seddon, Smith…
Article 6 provides one of the greatest opportunities to drive additional climate mitigation and resilience. With global greenhouse gas emissions still rising and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) collectively falling critically short of the ambition needed to keep the Paris Agreement’s goals within reach, there is an urgent need for effective tools to drive ambitious climate action.Our aim with the Oxford Principles for Article 6 is to foster international carbon markets that…
Participants enrolled in a total diet replacement (TDR) programme experienced significant improvements in eating disorder symptoms which persisted six months after the programme finished when participants had regained some weight. This directly addresses a research gap highlighted by recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on the use of ‘Low-energy and very-low-energy diets for adults’ in Overweight and obesity management, which noted a lack of evidence on…
The Guardian calls it “shattering.” The Stage heralds it as a “challenging, artfully constructed indictment of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.”Written by Anastasiia Kosodii and Josephine Burton, and directed by Burton, The Reckoning channels voices of Ukrainians across the country – a priest, a volunteer, a dentist, a security guard, a journalist – who are forced to confront the sudden horrors of invasion and occupation and to repair bonds of…
Researchers at the University of Oxford have uncovered a potential new therapeutic target in a particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat form of leukaemia. A new target for potential treatments for blast phase myeloproliferative neoplasm (BP-MPN), one of the most aggressive forms of leukaemia, has been identified by a research team at the University of Oxford. In a study published in Nature Genetics, researchers investigated the role of chromothripsis - a dramatic…
In this interview, Horace Tiggs IV, a partner in McKinsey’s Detroit office, speaks with W. David Tarver, president and founder of the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative (UEI), about spurring innovation and entrepreneurship within urban communities, how that drives economic mobility, and the challenges it faces today. They also discuss the importance of connecting entrepreneurs to ecosystems that lead to new solutions and scale. This transcript has been edited for clarity and…
In an era when digital experiences are closely tied to customer loyalty and financial success, credit unions stand at a crossroads. In a 2024 article, we spotlighted the growing chasm between credit unions and their competitors, a gulf that’s particularly noticeable among younger generations. Despite credit unions’ inherent advantages over banks, such as stronger member relationships and community ties, they are losing ground in the digital space.Furthermore, changing demographics spell…
Legislative context On May 22, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1), a budget reconciliation package designed in part to extend provisions from prior tax reform efforts and introduce new revenue-generating measures. Among these is the newly proposed Section 899, title Enforcement of Remedies Against Unfair Foreign Taxes, which would authorize targeted tax increases on investors in non-U.S. jurisdictions that impose certain types…
Let’s look at the next chapter of AI—agentic AI, and how it could unlock the next generation of operational excellence and productivity in service operations. We dig into the high stakes of continued investment in digital transformation and the potential payoffs. We discuss collaborations between the chief information officer (CIO) and COO, and how thoughtful talent strategies can set organizations up for continued digital success.In this episode of McKinsey Talks…
Stanford alumni Gayatri Datar, MBA ’14, co-founder and CEO of EarthEnable, and Pamela Ronald, MS ’84, a renowned plant geneticist, are this year’s recipients of the President’s Award for Advancement of the Common Good. The award honors alumni who use their talent and education to positively and sustainably change the trajectory of people’s lives. Award recipients exemplify the university’s mission and values, and demonstrate a commitment to learning, social responsibility, and…
In a recent decision, the Superior Court of Québec authorized a class action against a major social media platform operator, paving the way for users to seek compensation for financial losses tied to allegedly fraudulent advertisements posted by third parties. The plaintiffs allege that they suffered significant financial losses, of $1,000,000 and $250,000 respectively, after being misled by cryptocurrency-related advertising and investing in fraudulent third-party websites. The advertisements falsely promised…
Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a “gold mine” for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication to sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use.This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which argues that the financial worth of this data is “vastly underestimated” by users who supply profit-driven companies with highly intimate details in…
On Jan. 28, 2025, Arbitrator Russell Goodfellow released a set of eight interest arbitration awards for seven different public and Catholic district school boards in Ontario.1 BLG had the opportunity to serve as counsel to three of these seven school boards in this complex and precedent-setting litigation, with a team consisting of John-Paul Alexandrowicz, Melissa Eldridge, Jessica Wuergler, Callum Hutchinson and articling students Grace Sarabia, Colleen Williams and Hannah White. Key takeaways…
A fast-growing market Sixty-one percent of French people have taken food supplements at some point in the past 24 months, up from just forty-six percent in 2018. The trend is clear: French people are increasingly taking supplements to support and safeguard their day-to-day health.The top sellers? Products aimed at boosting vitality, strengthening immunity, improving digestion and managing stress, which on their own account for nearly 70% of sales at pharmacies.According…
The roundtable will initiate a broader discussion planned by the organisers on the origins and methods of ensuring security in the modern world – first, through the individual human experience. The second part, on how individual states can ensure internal stability as the main prerequisite for their own security, will be discussed the next day during the Valdai Club session at the SPIEF site. Programme of the Roundtable Discussion…
Combining the powers of artificial intelligence and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a team of researchers at Stanford University have created “digital twins” of struggling math students to offer first-ever insights into the neurological underpinnings of math learning disabilities, which vex as many as one in five students in America.“Our study grew out of a couple of decades of behavioral, cognitive neuroimaging work on trying to understand the brain bases…
10 June 2025By Benjamin Böninghausen and Florian HartmannGeopolitical tensions and trade policy uncertainty are injecting unpredictability into global financial markets. What seems like rock-solid market sentiment today can turn into jitters tomorrow. In this ECB Blog, we present a new risk appetite indicator to systematically track such shifts in market sentiment.Market swings – important beyond the trading floorCentral banks need to keep an eye on market sentiment as it signals…
Although the momentum has slowed in recent years, a large share of leading companies around the world have set bold decarbonization targets, and in the coming years, many will need to tackle the Scope 3 emissions linked to the materials embedded in their products. This article, which focuses on glass—particularly the flat glass industry—is part of a series of articles on how materials industries can decarbonize and increase circularity, offering…
Across the copper value chain, companies are setting ambitious targets to reach carbon neutrality in the next decade. This push for decarbonization coincides with increasing demand for copper—driven by the metal’s significance in future-facing applications such as batteries, renewable energy, and electricity transmission and distribution—as well as restricted supply. In fact, the world is expected to face a refined-copper shortfall of about 3.6 million metric tons (Mt) by 2035, according…
The Edison Histotripsy System was purchased thanks to a generous donation to the University of Cambridge from Hong Kong-based philanthropist Sir Ka-shing Li, a longstanding supporter of cancer research at the University.Histotripsy uses pulsed sound waves to create ‘bubble clouds’ from gases present in targeted tissue. These bubble clouds form and collapse in microseconds, creating mechanical forces able to destroy tissue at cellular and sub-cellular levels while avoiding ionising energy…
In today’s volatile environment, transformation at scale is more critical than ever for leaders looking to achieve a lasting performance advantage. Our research shows that one way to gain and sustain that advantage is to upgrade the procurement function. We analyzed thousands of companies’ transformation results across more than 340,000 transformation initiatives, which collectively represent more than $200 billion in value (see sidebar, “Scope of analysis”). We find that procurement…
This commentary originally appeared in Time. The views expressed are the author’s own. Thursday’s escalating explosions between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are only a prelude. It is the start of a hot war, and it could soon get far worse for Musk while doing Trump little good‚ other than to have a convenient scapegoat now for the unpopular DOGE with its over-promised $2 trillion of government savings. This…
For over a decade, scientists have been growing organoids – small clusters of cells that mimic a particular organ – to serve as miniature biological models. Organoids of the brain have been used to study neurodevelopmental disorders; intestinal organoids, to model celiac disease; and lung organoids, to investigate SARS-CoV-2. Heart organoids have even been sent to space to test the effect of microgravity on cardiac muscle. But there’s a tiny…
The recent clash between India and Pakistan was immediately dubbed the “drone war” by the press: for the first time, both sides were actively using UAVs in combat. Leyla Turayanova writes about the reasons for the tensions and explains how Russia unwittingly benefited from the latest Indo-Pakistani escalation. After the failure of attempts to normalise Indo-Pakistani relations at the beginning of Narendra Modi’s first term as prime minister, the situation during…
As far as we are aware, this is the most accurate qubit operation ever recorded anywhere in the world. It is an important step toward building practical quantum computers that can tackle real-world problems.Professor David Lucas, co-author, Department of Physics, University of Oxford.To put the result in perspective: a person is more likely to be struck by lightning in a given year (1 in 1.2 million) than for one of…
Launched in 2016, PRIME provides targeted scientific and regulatory support to medications designed to address conditions with an unmet medical need; there are currently no licensed vaccines or treatments for Nipah virus. The additional support offered by EMA PRIME has been granted on the basis of compelling preclinical data and preliminary clinical evidence, and will help to accelerate the development and regulatory approval of the ChAdOx1 NipahB vaccine, which is currently…
The $450 billion global beauty industry, a darling of the consumer goods market, has been white hot, but is the industry’s momentum finally cooling? For years, a seemingly insatiable appetite for newness in beauty fueled robust volume and even greater pricing growth, with the sector growing 7 percent annually from 2022 to 2024. Now, geopolitical and economic uncertainty, market saturation, and evolving consumer preferences threaten that progress, requiring industry leaders…
The Guardian has launched Secure Messaging as a module within its mobile news app to provide a secure and usable method of establishing initial contact between journalists and sources.It builds on a technology - CoverDrop –developed by Cambridge researchers and includes a wide range of security features. The code is available online and is open source, to encourage adoption by other news organisations. The app automatically generates regular decoy messages…
Plastics production accounts for about 3 percent of humanity’s global carbon emissions footprint. In addition, about 1.0 billion to 1.2 billion metric tons of fossil CO2 is bound up in plastic per year and may be released at the end of that plastic’s life if not treated in a circular way or buried, according to McKinsey analysis. Plastics are used in almost every industry, in products as simple as plastic…
Imagine two financial institutions. The first manages its loan origination process through a patchwork of task-level automation and predictive models. It uses historical credit scores, rigid underwriting rules, and batch processing to move applications through a series of sequential steps. While some parts of the process have been digitized, many decisions still require human intervention—whether due to exception handling, regulatory compliance checks, or risk flagging. This results in slower decision-making,…
Constructive dialogue is essential to the university’s mission of advancing knowledge and new ideas through discovery and open inquiry. And in an increasingly polarized world, these skills are needed more than ever. “I firmly believe that even in an era of division and distrust, Stanford can be a model for how we approach each other with curiosity and an open mind, and how to nurture the type of environment of constructive exchange…
Senior housing is designed for people to live in as they age and may be located within communities that provide catering and social activities, as well as medical care. But even in the most developed markets, only 5 percent of seniors move in. How can the senior-housing industry help support aging societies while expanding successful businesses? McKinsey’s Sam O’Gorman explains to McKinsey Global Publishing’s Katy McLaughlin how operators can address fears…
The post-2020 era has been one of enormous upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed consumer behavior and preferences, and uncertainty and disruption have continued to be major features of the global economy ever since. For example, the United States has been through a period of comparatively high inflation, there is global geopolitical uncertainty, and many countries have been roiled by the energy crisis and volatile financial markets. The result, as…
Executives view innovation as their companies’ primary source of competitive advantage for delivering growth. However, in many sectors, that belief doesn’t align with companies’ spending on innovation or the returns they get on those investments, the latest McKinsey Global Survey on innovation finds. During times of economic volatility, business leaders tend to focus on short-term profitability, often putting longer-term projects designed to spur growth on the back burner. Yet as our…