VolcanoTech’s sulphur dioxide detecting sensors are in already in use in a number of countries

Weather forecasts now include air quality warnings and cities have networks of air quality sensors driving real-time maps online.

Similar air quality sensors can warn of an imminent volcanic eruption. Just as a fizzy drink releases carbon dioxide when the pressure is released, rising magma emits dissolved sulphur dioxide as it rises. So a big increase in this gas warns that a volcanic eruption may be imminent.

Charlotte Ritchie presents a wildly ambitious and unapologetically brainy YouTube documentary that takes in Big Bang soundwaves, singing dolphins and an astonishing amount in between. Don’t miss it for the world

One of the big things to have come out of David Attenborough’s 100th birthday celebrations this year was the scale of ambition he had during his tenure behind camera. It was Attenborough who commissioned Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, two vast documentary series that became defining texts on the history of art and science.

The consensus seemed to be that this sort of thing – huge, cerebral, expensive – would simply not get made today, unless it was dumbed down and cut-price and rebranded as Amanda Holden’s Top 10 Renaissance Willies. So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the Cosmic Shambles Network’s new documentary series, For the Record: An Incomplete History of Music, takes its title as seriously as it does.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Thursday quiz fans inundated our mailbox with at least two messages pointing out that John Oliver had opened his HBO show discussing the problem of feral hogs, of which there are significantly more than between 30 and 50 in the US. If he starts opening shows talking about Sparks, Kate Bush, Syldavia and Alan Shearer’s fixations on distances, we truly will know where he gets his material from, and the Thursday quiz lawyers are ready. In the meantime, here are 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and pop culture to see you on towards the weekend. Let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 253

With tourists buying up property and landlords opting for lucrative Airbnb rentals, young Cornish people are turning to old campervans to give them a roof over their heads

Skye has a thick duvet in the van she calls home in Cornwall. In winter, the 25-year-old goes to bed in several layers of clothes and is grateful for the extra warmth of her cat. She parks up late, often in car parks well away from beaches, and never stays more than one night in case local people get angry and bang on her windows. This is van life. It can be a very different world from the tourist dream.

“Some winters I’ve had ice on the inside of my van windows, and the door handles frozen shut with me inside,” says Skye, a special educational needs teaching assistant. One year her diesel air heater packed up, and she spent the whole winter feeling cold. “That was genuinely awful.” Even with the heater on in the evening, those nights and early mornings when the temperature drops below zero are tough. “I often get dressed in bed,” she says. “You just have to adjust.”

Skye, 25 arriving back at her van after a day of walking

To stay popular with the public – and his backbenchers – he’ll need to make big changes fast. That means changing the way the government borrows

A Labour leader arrives, shirt and smile ironed into place, in his hands a big idea. He has polished one slogan, prepped three anecdotes, memorised eight bullet points. He wants more cash for vital services, or workers to have a stake in their employers, or to take some utility into public control. Not so big an idea, really, but, right on cue, the attacks come from almost every side – breathless lobby reporters, sententious columnists, zombie Blairites. And they all agree on one fatal thing: the bond markets will never wear it.

The death sentence having been pronounced, all that remains for the politician’s proposal is a pauper’s funeral.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Mark the return of courgette season by using the vegetable as the centrepiece for a cheesy and peppery pasta sauce

Having made too much parmesan cream for mortadella sandwiches the other week, the rest was carried over from one column to the next, and a recipe for pasta with courgettes and almonds was improved significantly by two large tablespoons of the soft cheese and parmesan beaten into a soft-savoury cream with the texture (but not taste) of toothpaste!

This recipe is also one that welcomes courgettes back to the northern hemisphere – not that they ever went away, now that everything is available all the time. The season proper, though, is something to celebrate as more and more courgettes appear in the gardens of those fortunate enough to grow them (flowers blazing), on market stalls and shop shelves, and in veg boxes. So much so that, at a certain point, it will all get too much and gardeners will start talking about gluts, cooks will threaten chutney and food magazines provide 101 ideas. But I am jumping ahead.

Jacob Wulfson’s fellow airmen decided his fate after a court martial at RAF Lakenheath – a distressing week for Sarah Steele, the academic he assaulted

• Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts to try its military over crimes in the UK

When Sarah Steele woke up on the morning of 2 December 2023, she found herself in a pool of cold water in a bathtub. She was naked and in the apartment of an American fighter pilot she had met in person for the first time the night before. She was confused. Her head hurt, and so did her neck.

This was the account Steele, a British academic, provided to prosecutors. They later accused the pilot, Capt Jacob Wulfson, of drugging and strangling Steele in his apartment in the east of England, and penetrating her vagina with his penis without her consent.

Many of France’s buildings are not designed for hot weather – and low-income housing estates are suffering the worst

Living in a sweltering, seventh-floor flat on a concrete housing estate south of Paris, Samira said she was feeling desperate as France experienced its highest temperatures on record this week. “Yesterday I sat down and cried, I thought I’m going to die,” said the 35-year-old single parent and former building caretaker.

Her flat in Ris-Orangis in Essonne is, like millions of apartments in France, poorly insulated and lacking in outside window shutters. “Blazing sun hits my windows all day – I can’t breathe, I feel dizzy, there is no air,” she said.

De moleculaire activiteit in ons lichaam is onbevattelijk. Fosfaat speelt daarbij een essentiële rol. De oorsprong van deze processen is misschien wel op de oceaanbodem te vinden.