Browse our complete collection of questions and answers.
A strip of habitat connecting otherwise isolated areas, allowing animals to move between them — and the evidence that connectivity matters is strong, while the evidence about specific corridors is
An estimate, in money, of the damage caused by emitting one additional tonne of carbon dioxide — used to put climate effects into cost-benefit analysis of policies and projects. Why it exists.
A formal process requiring the likely environmental effects of a proposed development to be identified, assessed and taken into account before consent is granted — a procedural requirement rather
Carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems — principally saltmarsh, mangroves and seagrass — which sequester carbon at rates far exceeding most terrestrial habitats, per unit area.
Because they store an extraordinary quantity of carbon in a very small area, and damaged peatland releases it — turning one of the most effective natural carbon stores into an emissions source. What
A species whose effect on its ecosystem is disproportionately large relative to its abundance — so removing it causes changes far beyond what its numbers would suggest. The origin. The concept comes
Power is a rate; energy is a quantity. Power is how fast energy is used or produced; energy is how much has been used over time. Confusing them is behind a great deal of muddled discussion about
Curtailment is reducing generation below what a plant could produce — and wind farms are compensated for it because the grid physically cannot move the electricity to where it is needed, not because
A certificate proving that a unit of electricity was generated from a renewable source — and whether buying one changes anything depends on a concept called additionality, which is where most green
A method for measuring the environmental impacts of a product across its entire life — extraction, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal — rather than at one stage, which is where intuitions
A classification of an organisation's greenhouse gas emissions by where they occur relative to the organisation, established by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and now the standard framework for
The finding that a substantial proportion of published research findings cannot be reproduced when the studies are repeated — documented most prominently in psychology and medicine, and subsequently
Tenure is a form of permanent appointment protecting an academic from dismissal except for defined serious cause — and in the form it takes in the United States, it does not exist in the UK, which is
Reviews research involving people, their data or their tissue before it begins, to assess whether the risks to participants are justified and properly managed — a prior approval requirement, not a
How they are reviewed, how quickly they appear, and how much they count — and the answer varies enormously by discipline, which is the source of most cross-field misunderstanding. Journal article.
Considerably more than the research itself — and the largest single component is frequently people, with a substantial additional amount going to the institution rather than to the project. The
Whether the method is specified in advance and reproducible. A literature review surveys what has been written; a systematic review follows a pre-registered protocol designed to find and appraise all
Making research papers freely readable rather than behind a subscription — and the argument for it is straightforward, while the mechanisms for paying for it have created new problems. The case for
Two widely used metrics — one measuring a journal, one measuring a researcher — both extensively criticised and both still consequential for careers and funding. Journal impact factor. The average
A postdoctoral researcher is someone with a doctorate employed on a fixed-term research contract — and the structural reason the position is precarious is straightforward arithmetic that nobody
A doctorate is awarded for an original contribution to knowledge, and the viva voce is the oral examination at which that contribution is defended — a process that differs substantially from every
Yes. Term-time absence without authorisation can result in a penalty notice, and the rules were tightened and made more consistent across England from August 2024. The legal position. Parents have a
Two are lawful formal processes with defined procedures; the third is unlawful and describes removing a pupil informally to avoid those procedures. Suspension (formerly fixed-period exclusion). A
A measure of how much progress pupils make between the end of primary school and their GCSEs, compared with pupils who started at a similar level nationally — designed to judge the school's
Provides strategic oversight of a school and holds its leadership to account — a voluntary, unpaid role with genuine legal responsibility that most people assume is largely ceremonial. The three core
Educating a child outside school, which is lawful in the UK — and the legal duty is frequently misunderstood, because it is not a duty to send a child to school. The actual legal duty. Parents must
Additional funding given to schools in England for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, intended to close the attainment gap between them and their peers. Who it is paid for: pupils who are
Places are allocated by published oversubscription criteria, applied in order, when a school receives more applications than places — and "catchment" is only one of several possible criteria, not a
Three different things frequently confused, because two describe governance and one describes selection. The governance categories: Maintained school. Funded and overseen by the local authority,
A statutory framework setting out the subjects and content that must be taught — and the crucial point is that a large proportion of English schools are not required to follow it, which surprises
A judgement about a school's provision against a published framework — and the system has changed substantially, which matters for interpreting any report you read. The single-word judgements —
A media plan sets out where advertising will run, when, for how much, and to whom. Flighting is one of the scheduling patterns it can use — concentrating spend into bursts rather than spreading it
It helps with discovery, particularly on large or poorly linked sites — and it does not improve rankings, which is the misconception worth clearing up first. What an XML sitemap is. A file listing
A document telling a writer what a piece needs to accomplish and why, before they start — and its purpose is to prevent the far more expensive process of discovering the mismatch after the draft
Three distinct jobs: helping people navigate, helping search engines discover pages, and distributing ranking signals around a site. It is among the most underused levers in SEO, largely because it
Optimising to appear for searches with local intent — where the searcher wants a business near them — and it is genuinely a different discipline, because the ranking factors and the results
Permanence. A 301 says the page has moved permanently; a 302 says it has moved temporarily. Search engines treat them very differently, and using the wrong one has real consequences. — permanent.
The set of considerations that arise when a site's content is generated in the browser by JavaScript rather than delivered in the initial HTML — because search engines must execute that JavaScript
The amount of crawling a search engine is willing and able to do on a site — and for the overwhelming majority of sites, it does not matter at all, which is the most useful thing to know about it.
A signal telling search engines which version of a page is the preferred one when the same or very similar content is reachable at several URLs — so that ranking signals consolidate on one address
The idea that covering a subject comprehensively makes a site more likely to rank for queries within it — because depth across a topic signals expertise in a way that a single page cannot. The
A database that links the many different identifiers belonging to the same person or household — cookies, device IDs, email addresses, phone numbers, account logins — so that a fragmented set of
Less well than the industry's reliance on it suggests. Demographic categories are weak predictors of purchasing behaviour, and the evidence for this has been accumulating for years without changing
The situations, needs and moments that prompt someone to think of a category at all — and the argument, from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, is that brands are chosen by being mentally available at
A single measure a whole organisation aligns around — chosen because it captures the value customers actually receive, so that improving it necessarily means the business is working. The problem it
A mechanism by which analytics and advertising tags adjust their behaviour according to whether a user has consented — sending limited, non-identifying signals rather than either full tracking or
A secure environment where two parties can analyse their combined data without either seeing the other's raw records — developed because privacy regulation and the loss of third-party tracking made
Measuring whether advertising changed what people think — awareness, recall, consideration, favourability — rather than what they immediately bought. It exists because a great deal of advertising
Limiting how many times the same person is shown the same advertisement within a period — and it matters because advertising effect does not rise indefinitely with repetition; it rises, plateaus, and
Who collected it and from whom — a distinction that became central as third-party tracking was restricted. First-party data. Collected by you, directly from your own customers and visitors, through