David Rees, head of local government services at PA Consulting, discusses how local authorities can protect vulnerable residents by using assistive technology to maintain their vital social care services during COVID-19 isolation.
Here, Takahira Yamaguchi from Keio University in Japan explores how different robots cooperate in a multi-robot café, beginning with details about service workflow.
Sophie Hoogendijk and Gideon Bolt from the Faculty of Geosciences – Utrecht University, describe the effects of office conversions in the Netherlands, commencing with commentary on vacant offices in this analysis of the built environment.
David Goff, MD, PhD, Director, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., introduces the work of the organisation and his thoughts on supporting heart and vascular health research.
Margaret Heffernan, Author of Uncharted, shares her thoughts about how AI, big data and forecasting might not be the solution to the coronavirus, and how society should really be preparing itself for more inevitable epidemics.
In recognition of Debt Awareness Week, Lubaina Manji, Senior Programme Manager, Nesta Challenges, explores how open banking has enabled fintech to provide a new set of tools to alleviate debt.
![Figure 1: Sketch of the evolution of the Universe over the last 13.77 billion years. It started with the Big Bang, followed by an extremely short period of rapid exponential expansion. The furthest we can see is the cosmic microwave background, when radiation decoupled from matter, approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang. This is followed by the ‘dark ages,’ during which this radiation redshifted from the visible regime into infrared and sub-mm wavelengths. The occurrence of the first stars, about 400 million years after the Big Bang, ended this phase, spearheading the formation of galaxies as we see them today. [Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team, public domain]](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fig-1_1200.jpg)
