Brian May has many strings to his guitar. The musician, who is still touring with his rock band Queen, is also an astrophysicist, specializing in three-dimensional stereoscopic images of distant bodies. And to the UK public, he's also a passionate campaigner for animal rights. After abandoning his PhD at Imperial College London in 1974 to follow his musical passions, May finally returned to complete his doctorate in 2007. Soon after, the rockstar embroiled himself in a polarizing scientific row over whether the European badger (Meles meles) was causing mass infection of cattle with bovine tuberculosis (TB). Each year, the problem costs the UK government more than '100 million (US$130 million) and leads to the slaughter of more than 20,000 cows. Some scientists initially backed the government's policy of culling badgers ' 230,000 have been killed since 2013 ' although many now doubt the approach's effectiveness. The past government had planned to phase out culling in favour of vaccination, but 20 culling licences were issued this year. The new Labour government has said that it plans to end culling, but these licences will continue....

Ask any start-up founder in recent years what guided them in the early days of their entrepreneurial journey and the Lean Startup method is likely to enter the conversation. The book by serial entrepreneur and software engineer Eric Ries, published in 2011, has become a bible for business neophytes; it has sold more than a million copies and is taught in business schools and accelerators....