The UK is yet again bracing itself for a government announcement regarding COVID-19 restrictions. The worry this time surrounds the Delta variant, first detected in India and classed a variant of concern by the UK government on May 6, 2021.

There would be a scandal if thousands of people were dying from a disease caught from the water that comes out of the tap. Or if commonly used building materials were causing widespread disease. Could the COVID-19 pandemic change our expectations about catching diseases from the air indoors?

Lidia Morawska

There aren't many computer algorithms famous enough to get their very own birthday party, but Quicksort is one of them. Invented by the computer scientist Tony Hoare and published in July 1961, the algorithm's task is to put lists of things into the correct order: numbers in numerical order, words into alphabetical order, or dates into chronological oder. It does this so successfully, it is still hailed as one of the best sorting algorithms and implemented in many programming languages and libraries.