Has there ever been an invention so integral to our lives, and so intimate, as the smartphone? Yet they are slippery things.
- By Cris Brack
I teach measurement – the quantification of things. Some people think this is the most objective of the sciences; just numbers and observations, or what many people call objective facts.
- By Ross Piper
For thousands of years humans turned to nature to cure and soothe their ills. Modern science built on these ancient foundations and the “natural product discovery” programmes established by pharmaceutical companies provided us with medicines that could treat cancer, infections and more.
The Internet of Things is a popular vision of objects with internet connections sending information back and forth to make our lives easier and more comfortable.
Many Americans find themselves bombarded by expert advice to limit their screen time and break their addictions to digital devices – including enforcing and modeling this restraint for the children in their lives.
Today, the scientific community is aghast at the prospect of gene editing to create “designer” humans.
What the internet looks like to users in the U.S. can be quite different from the online experience of people in other countries.
We’re squandering increasing amounts of time distracted by our phones. And that’s taking a serious toll on our mental and physical well-being.
Many of us have had the experience of arriving in an unfamiliar city and needing to get to a specific destination – whether it’s checking in at a hotel, meeting a friend at a local brewery, or navigating to a meeting on time.
- By Claire Jones
One reason women tend to be absent from narratives of science is because it’s not as easy to find female scientists on the public record.
The media is buzzing with the surprise news that a Chinese researcher, Jainkui He, has created the world’s first genome-edited twins.
- By Nancy Cooke
For most people today, robots and smart systems are servants that work in the background, vacuuming carpets or turning lights on and off. Or they’re machines that have taken over repetitive human jobs from assembly-line workers and bank tellers.
We connect to people around us in mysterious ways but science has proven that the heart is the biggest source of electromagnetic energy in the human body. They found there is an electromagnetic (energetic communication) between people.
- By Jan Hoole
The deepest dive recorded by the free-diving Bajau Laut people of Southeast Asia was to an impressive 79 metres, and the longest time spent underwater by them was just over three minutes.
Augmented reality systems show virtual objects in the real world – like cat ears and whiskers on a Snapchat selfie, or how well a particular chair might fit in a room.
Time travel to the UK in 2025: Harry is a teenager with a smartphone and Pauline is a senior citizen with Alzheimer’s who relies on smart glasses for independent living. Harry is frustrated his favorite online game is slow, and Pauline is anxious since her healthcare app is unresponsive.
- By Jean Twenge
Many parents want to know how much time their kids should be spending in front of screens, whether it’s their smartphones, tablets or TV. For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics had suggested a limit of two hours a day of TV for children and teens.
Smartphones, computers and social media platforms have become indispensable parts of modern life, but the technology companies that make them and write their software are under siege. In any given week, Facebook or Google or Amazon does something to erode public trust in them. Now could be a moment for the industry to make good on...
For those readers, who’ve ever had an operation – whether it was planned or an emergency – things in the real world probably felt very different to those familiar TV drama medical emergency scenes.
If you dread a day of rest from the digital world, then you probably need one. A secular sabbath is time away from your devices. It can be any day of the week, just whatever works for you.
The future won’t be made by either humans or machines alone – but by both, working together. Technologies modeled on how human brains work are already augmenting people’s abilities, and will only get more influential as society gets used to these increasingly capable machines.
It’s been a good year for apples. Across Europe the apple harvest is the biggest it has been for a decade. But the handful of apple types you see on supermarket shelves only tells part of the story.
Watching a 50th anniversary screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I found myself, a mathematician and computer scientist whose research includes work related to artificial intelligence, comparing the story’s vision of the future with the world today.