Social science

Award recognises a role model who enables legal students to help others. Melanie Newman writes

Romantic attractions between teacher and student may be as old as pedagogy itself, but now such relationships cause people to worry about abuses of power and litigation. Only half of institutions have any guidelines on such relationships. Are they needed? asks Hannah Fearn

... but our tastes are swayed by price, packaging and other social psychological factors in ways we're often unaware of. Matthew Kieran considers the fragility of aesthetic opinions in the latest in our fortnightly series allowing academics to step outside their field of expertise

Higher IQs mean upper-class domination is 'natural', academic says. Rebecca Attwood reports

The Earth is suffering from CO2 overload. Anthony Giddens asks how we can limit climate change

Lynne Segal is not entirely seduced by arguments for the innate naughtiness of God's chosen people

Stephen Gundle on the tales a beloved wooden puppet has to tell about his creator's country

Simon Barton is disappointed by a lopsided, broad-brush tale of Dark Ages Muslim-Christian clashes

The ban on performance-boosting substances in sport is a self-satisfied nonsense, argues historian Geoffrey Alderman in a fortnightly series allowing academics to step outside their area of expertise

Lancaster and Manchester move to give students more time with tutors, writes Rebecca Attwood

Edinburgh and Cambridge universities to set up Muslim research centres. Olga Wojtas reports

Julia King, charged with the review of low-carbon cars, talks to John Gill about energy efficiency

Peer review lets us reward excellence when we see it; spurious 'absolute' standards do not, says Ron Johnston

Ian Patterson wishes a study built around writers' day-to-day concerns wasn't quite so workaday

Nick Prior finds plenty to think about in a new translation of one of Pierre Bourdieu's last works

Torture cannot be justified, says Philippe Sands, an academic and barrister who has traced how the US came to sanction the practice after 9/11. It doesn't work and it costs us dearly, he tells Matthew Reisz

A law lecturer argues that ethics rules must sometimes allow researchers to act illegally in fieldwork. Melanie Newman writes

Universities warned that anti-research campaigners could attack from within. Chloe Stothart reports

John Whitelegg on a review of current economic challenges that overpromises and underdelivers

What price victory? Huw Dixon weighs the odds