By Sophie Harman, Queen Mary, University of London

By John Long, Flinders University

By Anthony Vassallo, University of Sydney

The recent review of the Australian Renewable Energy Target has once again raised the issue of the “unreliability” of some renewable power sources such as wind and solar power.

By Rosalind Crone, The Open University

A panic erupted in Britain 126 years ago.

At daybreak on Saturday September 8, the mutilated body of Annie Chapman, a prostitute, had been found in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields.

Her injuries and the removal of some of her abdominal organs led investigators and journalists to link Chapman’s murder with that of another woman, only a week earlier.

By Tim Crook, Goldsmiths, University of London

The Old Bailey’s Central Criminal Court is an Edwardian building that bears the inscription “Defend the children of the poor and Punish the wrongdoer.”

An Italian visitor more than 100 years ago suggested it should be replaced with an aphorism from Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter here.”

By Rob Brooks, UNSW Australia.

Settle in for a long read. Over the coming weeks you will be bombarded by shorter, snappier pieces about a controversy inflaming the front where evolutionary and social psychology meet. I’ve touched on this controversy already, and promised you more. Here’s that more, in 2,300 words of detail … rather too long for a column, I know.

Still with me? Thanks.