When children learn how to tie their shoelaces, they do so in discrete steps—making a loop or tugging at the lace. After enough repetition, our brain turns these steps into “chunks.”

Research shows that a student’s genetic makeup can have a strong influence on their academic performance.

We live, we are so often told, in an information age. It is an era obsessed with space, time and speed, in which social media inculcates virtual lives that run parallel to our “real” lives and in which communications technologies collapse distances around the globe.

The smartphone in your hand enables you to record a video, edit it and send it around the world. With your phone, you can navigate in cities, buy a car, track your vital signs and accomplish thousands of other tasks. And so?

Mobile phone data may reveal an underlying mathematical connection between how we move and how we communicate. This could make it easier to predict how diseases—and even ideas—spread through a population.

Accidents, natural disasters and random or targeted attacks can cripple human infrastructure. Our transportation networks, supply chains and communication networks are increasing in size and becoming more complex as our populations grow.

"Our theory explains specifically why primates developed superintelligence but dinosaurs—who faced many of the same environmental pressures and had more time to do so—did not. Dinosaurs matured in eggs, so there was no linking between intelligence and infant immaturity at birth," says Celeste Kidd.

It was 1986, and the American space agency, NASA, was reeling from the loss of seven lives. The space shuttle Challenger had broken apart about one minute after its launch.

Ask around – everyone has an opinion about their email and their inbox, and it’s not always positive. From information overload, zero inbox and leaked email scandals to the much-hyped triumph of workflow software like Slack and Asana, email has certainly had a bad rap recently.

Extra, extra! The embargo’s lifted, read all about it. Rumors were flying through the blogosphere this winter: physicists at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) may finally have directly detected gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Einstein 100 years ago in his general theory of relativity. Gravitational waves were predicted to be produced by cataclysmic...

Once the three-billion-letter-long human genome was sequenced, we rushed into a new “omics” era of biological research. Scientists are now racing to sequence the genomes (all the genes) or proteomes (all the proteins) of various organisms – and in the process are compiling massive amounts of data.

Any long-term solution will require “decarbonizing” the world energy economy – that is, shifting to power sources that use little or no fossil fuel.

Through pressure from Google, Facebook, and other major providers such as Yahoo and Apple the world wide web is slowing becoming more secure, with web services using HTTPS to encrypt web traffic by default.

"The research was just one experiment in a lab," Steve Lohr writes in the New York Times about the study, "but it does point to the larger subject of striking a balance between connectedness and isolation in the digital age."

Earlier this month, the US Broadband Opportunity Council declared that broadband is “taking its place alongside water, sewer and electricity as essential infrastructure for communities”.

Every year, people in the US throw away 2.5 billion plastic foam cups—and that’s just a fraction of the 33 million tons of plastic that Americans throw out each year.

Apps drain 28.9 percent of smartphone battery power while the screen is off, according to the first large-scale study of smartphones in everyday use.

As petroleum-based polymers foul our oceans and litter our lives, researchers seek more environmentally friendly ways to meet demand for durable, versatile materials.

“Also: please note that we NEVER link to Wikipedia,” reads the email about an article for The Conversation Africa. I’m not surprised. The same sentiment is expressed in many course documents at universities and schools.