Category Archives: Science

08May/25

Conclave: the chemistry behind the black and white smoke

Mark Lorch, University of Hull

This week, 133 cardinals have gathered in the Vatican to elect a new leader of the Catholic church. During their deliberations, the only indications of their progress are the regular plumes of smoke wafting from a freshly installed chimney perched on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

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28Oct/24

A new ‘race science’ network is linked to a history of eugenics that never fully left academia

Lars Cornelissen, Independent Social Research Foundation

The Guardian and anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate have revealed the existence of a new network of far-right intellectuals and activists in an undercover investigation. Called the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF), this group advocates scientific racism and eugenics. Although it presents itself as having a scientific purpose, some of its figureheads have political ambitions in Germany and elsewhere.

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04Sep/24

Clarivate Launches Generative AI-Powered Web of Science Research Assistant

Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today released the Web of Science™ Research Assistant. The new generative AI-powered tool helps researchers find key papers faster, handle complex research tasks and visualize connections. The chat interface combined with the Web of Science knowledge graph allows researchers to get more out of their interactions with 120 years of trusted publication and citation data in the Web of Science Core Collection™. Continue reading

30Jul/24

Akamai Research: Web Attacks Targeting Applications and APIs Up by 49% in the Last Year

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud company that powers and protects life online, today released a new State of the Internet (SOTI) report that shows how growth in demand for applications and APIs has transformed them into lucrative targets for threat actors. In Digital Fortresses Under Siege: Threats to Modern Application Architectures, Akamai notes that it observed more than 26 billion web attacks against applications and APIs in June 2024 alone, and that these attacks surged by 49% over the last year. Read more

15Dec/23

Kenyan digital IDs: paused again

By Nita Bhalla | East Africa Correspondent

Dec 14, 2023, / Thomson Reuters Foundation/ — A high court in Kenya has halted the rollout of a new national digital identification programme, saying authorities failed to assess the risks from processing citizens’ personal data. Continue reading

15Nov/23

How music heals us, even when it’s sad – by a neuroscientist leading a new study of musical therapy

Leigh Riby, Northumbria University, Newcastle

When I hear Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One, it takes me back to when I was 15, playing on my Dad’s PC. I was tidying up the mess after he had tried to [take his own life]. He’d been listening to her album, and I played it as I tidied up. Whenever I hear the song, I’m taken back – the sadness and anger comes flooding back.

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19Jun/23

How a 400 million year old fossil changes our understanding of mathematical patterns in nature

Sandy Hetherington, The University of Edinburgh and Holly-Anne Turner, University College Cork

If your eyes have ever been drawn to the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, the texture of a pineapple or the scales of a pinecone, then you have unknowingly witnessed brilliant examples of mathematical patterns in nature.

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31May/23

Kingdom Code is a scientific community

May 31, 2023 /Lifestyle/ — Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. It is a process of discovery that involves making observations, formulating hypotheses, and testing those hypotheses through experiments.

Science can be seen as a miracle because it allows us to understand the world around us in a way that was not possible before. It has given us the ability to cure diseases, develop new technologies, and explore the universe. Continue reading

27May/23

CAA Professor Wang Dongling Exhibition “Ink. Space. Time.” inspired by Prof. Stephen Hawking Opens at the University of Cambridge

The exhibition Ink. Space. Time. by Wang Dongling, a world-renowned calligrapher and professor at the China Academy of Art, is held at the University of Cambridge from May 25th to August 27th. The exhibition presents the artist’s monumental contemporary Chinese calligraphy work inspired by Prof. Stephen Hawking. Continue reading