Category Archives: Reviews

History Books: ‘The Castle’ By John Goodall (2022)

John Goodall’s The Castle: A history is the much slimmer companion to his magisterial The English Castle, (2011). Partly an attempt to bring the fruits of his research to a wider audience, Goodall’s new book uses extracts and quotations as the foundation of a historical account: each short chapter features an excerpt from a primary source that seeks to illustrate a particular moment. Rather than offering an architectural or conventional narrative history, Goodall explores the concept of the castle as it has been imagined, remade and contested over time. Important castles such as the Tower of London, Kenilworth and Windsor feature throughout.

Brain Health: The Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting

Although intermittent fasting is most widely known as a weight-loss strategy, emerging research suggests that it could have benefits for brain health and cognition. But does it actually work, are there any drawbacks and how long would you have to fast to see benefits? WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down what’s known and what’s not about the neuroscience of intermittent fasting.

Timeline: 0:00 Could intermittent fasting help our brains work better and longer? 0:31 How long would you have to fast to see any potential cognitive benefits? 1:04 How intermittent fasting could affect your ability to focus 2:27 Potential mood-related benefits of intermittent fasting 2:48 How intermittent fasting can affect brain health 4:03 Potential drawbacks of intermittent fasting

Reviews: The Prettiest Hotels In Seville, Spain

May 15, 2022 – Seville is ready for a true return to form. The city whose splendour has inspired countless works of music, art and poetry is in the beating heart of Andalucía, with its enchanting streets lined with orange trees and Moorish highlights. It’s a flavour that infuses the city’s architecture, which is also full of colonial influences due to the wealthy merchants that traded across the Spanish Empire. Saturated with various styles and cultures, many of the city’s age-old properties have been carefully converted into cool places to stay, while remaining steeped in heritage. Whether you’re in search of a rooftop pool to dip into or classic Moorish architecture, this is your ultimate guide to the best hotels in Seville.

  • Alfonso XIII
    • Alfonso XIII For a taste of truly regal extravagance, look no further. Built specially for Seville’s 1929 Expo, this majestic establishment was commissioned by the then king of Spain, who gave it his own name. Look out for the monarch’s mahogany and bronze throne: this was originally used in the royal office of the premises, which is where the restaurant Ena now sits. Here, executive chef Brian Deegan had just launched a new menu including grilled Iberian pork with escalivada and scallops with cauliflower foam. The hotel’s 148 rooms alternate Andalusian, Castilian and Moorish decorative styles; with grand stairways, sweeping corridors and ornamental patterns everywhere the eye can see.

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World Economic Forum: Top Stories Of The Week

This week The World Economic Forum are highlighting 4 top stories – millennial retirement savings, slingshot tech for satellite launches, China’s cheapest electric car, and Paris noise sensors

Timeline: 00:15 Millennial retirement savings 01:48 Slingshot satellite launches 03:46 China’s cheapest electric car 04:52 Paris installs noise sensors

The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

This week: is heritage in Ukraine being attacked and looted, and what can be done to protect it?

Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s museums and heritage editor, Tom Seymour, who has been to the Ukrainian-Polish border with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), to witness museum materials being sent into Ukraine to help institutions there. Then, Tom talks to Sophie Delepierre, the head of heritage protection at ICOM, about the organisation’s efforts in Ukraine and elsewhere.

As a major exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne opens at The Art Institute of Chicago, ahead of its journey to Tate Modern later in the year, Ben talks to Gloria Groom and Caitlin Haskell, the curators of the Chicago exhibition. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, asks Oliver Lanzenberg, the grandson of the artist Nicola L., about his grandmother’s work Gold Femme Commode (1969/1993). The piece is part of a show at Alison Jacques, one of a number of exhibitions opening to coincide with the second edition of London Gallery Weekend.

Tom’s full report into ICOM’s work for Ukraine is in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and online soon.

The organisation Sophie mentions is NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organisations, ne-mo.org.

Cezanne, The Art Institute of Chicago, 15 May-5 September; Tate Modern, London, 5 October-12 March 2023.

Nicola L., Alison Jacques, London, until 23 July.

London Gallery Weekend, 13-15 May.

Cover Preview: Science Magazine – May 13, 2022

A survey of cell types across tissues as part of the Human Cell Atlas, mapped with single-cell transcriptomics in three papers in this issue, lays the foundation for understanding how cellular composition and gene expression vary across the human body in health, and for understanding how genes act in disease. 

Nutrigenomics: How Diet Can Reprogram Our DNA

The burgeoning field of “nutrigenomics” claims that the food we eat can alter our genetics. Dietitians, scientists and lifestyle companies have all hopped on the bandwagon.

Nutrigenomics (also known as nutritional genomics) is broadly defined as the relationship between nutrients, diet, and gene expression. The launch of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and the subsequent mapping of human DNA sequencing ushered in the ‘era of big science’, jump-starting the field of nutrigenomics that we know today.

Cover Previews: Nature Magazine – May 12, 2022

Volume 605 Issue 7909

Nova explosions occur when a runaway thermonuclear reaction is triggered in a white dwarf that is accreting hydrogen from a companion star. The massive amount of energy released ultimately creates the bright light source that can be seen with a naked eye as a nova. But some of the energy has been predicted to be lost during the initial stages of the reaction as a flash of intense luminosity — a fireball phase — detectable as low-energy X-rays. In this week’s issue, Ole König and his colleagues present observations that corroborate this prediction. Using scans taken by the instrument eROSITA, the researchers identified a short, bright X-ray flash from the nova YZ Reticuli a few hours before it became visible in the optical spectrum. The cover shows an artist’s impression of the nova in the fireball phase. 

Previews: New Scientist Magazine – May 14, 2022

New Scientist Magazine, May 14, 2022

COVER STORIES

  • FEATURES Fascia: The long-overlooked tissue that shapes your health
  • FEATURES The grand plan to create a periodic table of all animal intelligence
  • FEATURES Have we been measuring the expansion of the universe wrong all along?
  • NEWS Simple webcam test could show whether you lack a mind’s eye
  • NEWS How quickly can you catch covid-19 again if you have already had it?