Category Archives: Science

08Apr/23

A professor is going to live in an underwater hotel for 100 days – here’s what it might do to his body

April 8, 2023ScienceBradley Elliott, Chemistry, Creative Commons, Critical emergency medicine, Diving medicine, Hyperbaric medicine, Immune system, Joe Dituri, Natural sciences, Oxygen, Physical sciences, Pressure, Sun tanning, Sunlight, United States, Vitamin Dadmin

Bradley Elliott, University of Westminster

As nightmares go, being trapped in a small box deep underwater is probably high on many peoples’ lists. But one US professor is doing this on purpose. Joe Dituri, a former US navy diver and expert in biomedical engineering has been living in a 55 square meter space 30 feet below the surface of the Florida Keys since March 1, and plans to stay for 100 days. If he manages this, he will break a record for most time spent in a habitat beneath the surface of the ocean.

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06Apr/23

Life: modern physics can’t explain it – but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might

April 6, 2023ScienceArticles, Creative Commons, Darwin, Einstein, Isaac Newton, Matter, Natural sciences, Outline of physics, Philosophy of physics, Philosophy of space and time, Physical cosmology, Physical sciences, Physics, Quantum mechanics, Sara Imari Walker, SHUTTERSTOCK, Time in physics, Universeadmin

Sara Imari Walker, Arizona State University

Over the short span of just 300 years, since the invention of modern physics, we have gained a deeper understanding of how our universe works on both small and large scales. Yet, physics is still very young and when it comes to using it to explain life, physicists struggle.

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10Mar/23

Why does music bring back memories? What the science says

March 10, 2023ScienceAutobiographical memory, Biology, Childhood amnesia, Cognitive science, Creative Commons, Emotion, Emotion and memory, Involuntary memory, Kelly Jakubowski, Memory, Mind, Music and emotion, Recalladmin

Kelly Jakubowski, Durham University

You’re walking down a busy street on your way to work. You pass a busker playing a song you haven’t heard in years. Now suddenly, instead of noticing all the goings on in the city around you, you’re mentally reliving the first time you heard the song. Hearing that piece of music takes you right back to where you were, who you were with and the feelings associated with that memory.

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21Feb/23

How your brain decides what to think

February 21, 2023ScienceAcademic disciplines, Articles, Cognition, Cognitive science, Consciousness, Creative Commons, Dream, Emergence, Intrusive thought, Marcus Raichle, Memory, Mental processes, Mind, Neuropsychological assessment, Valerie van Mulukomadmin

Valerie van Mulukom, Coventry University

You’re sitting on the plane, staring out of the window at the clouds and all of a sudden, you think back to how a few months ago, you had a heart-to-heart with a good colleague about the pressure you experience at work. How do thoughts seemingly completely unrelated to the present pop into our heads? Why do we remember certain things and not others? Why does our mind go off on tangents and why do we have daydreams?

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19Jan/23

How to spot a cyberbot – five tips to keep your device safe

January 19, 2023ScienceAdrian Winckles, Andrew Moore, Antivirus software, Artem, Botnets, Computer network security, Computer virus, Computing, Creative Commons, Cybercrime, Internet security, Multi-agent systems, Rootkit, Security, Security breaches, SHUTTERSTOCK, Spammingadmin

How to spot a cyberbot – five tips to keep your device safe

Malware is designed to hide in your device
Jaiz Anuar/Shutterstock

Adrian Winckles, Anglia Ruskin University and Andrew Moore, Anglia Ruskin University

You may know nothing about it, but your phone – or your laptop or tablet – could be taken over by someone else who has found their way in through a back door. They could have infected your device with malware to make it a “bot” or a “zombie” and be using it – perhaps with hundreds of other unwitting victims’ phones – to launch a cyberattack.

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13Jan/23

2022 wasn’t the year of Cleopatra – so why was she the most viewed page on Wikipedia?

January 13, 2023Science.google, Alphabet Inc., Android, Bryant, Cleopatra, Creative Commons, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dublin, Elon Musk, Google Search, Jeffrey Dahmer, Johnny Depp, Julius Caesar, Murder, Open-source intelligence, Philip, SHUTTERSTOCK, Social information processing, Taha Yasseri, Ukraine, United States, Websites, Wikipedia, World Wide Webadmin

Taha Yasseri, University College Dublin

At the end of every year, I gather statistics on the most viewed Wikipedia articles of the year. This helps me, a computational social scientist, understand what topics captured the most attention and gives me a chance to reflect on the major public events of the year. I try to use data to determine how the public (and more specifically here, English-language Wikipedia readers) will collectively remember the past year.

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15Dec/22

Why I’m righting the wrongs of my early research and sharing my scientific data with local communities

December 15, 2022ScienceArticles, Botswana, Countries, Creative Commons, Field research, Knowledge, Michael Crichton, Research, Sallie Burrough, Sarah Mothulatshipi, Science, Scientific method, SHUTTERSTOCK, United Kingdomadmin

Sallie Burrough, University of Oxford

“You know what’s wrong with scientific power? It’s a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.” That’s how filmmaker Michael Crichton put it in Jurassic Park nearly 30 years ago. The problem of scientific colonialism has not, however, gone away.

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04Nov/22

How a quest for mathematical truth and complex models can lead to useless scientific predictions – new research

November 4, 2022Science.google, Academic disciplines, Applied mathematics, Arnald Puy, Articles, Assumption, Creative Commons, Economic model, Environmental science, Gerd Gigerenzer, Hydrology, Mathematical model, Physical geography, Prediction, Scientific modeling, Scientific modelling, Sensitivity analysis, SHUTTERSTOCK, United Statesadmin

Arnald Puy, University of Birmingham

A dominant view in science is that there is a mathematical truth structuring the universe. It is assumed that the scientist’s job is to decipher these mathematical relations: once understood, they can be translated into mathematical models. Running the resulting “silicon reality” in a computer may then provide us with useful insights into how the world works.

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05Oct/22

Nobel prize: physicists share prize for insights into the spooky world of quantum mechanics

October 5, 2022ScienceAlbert Einstein, Anton Zeilinger, Bell's theorem, Creative Commons, Emerging technologies, France, Hidden-variable theory, J.F. Clauser, John Bell, John Clauser, John F. Clauser, Northern Ireland, Optics, Paris, Physical sciences, Physics, Quantum entanglement, Quantum information science, Quantum measurement, Quantum mechanics, Quantum technology, Robert Young, United Statesadmin

Members of the Nobel Committee for Physics announce the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics (L-R on the screen) Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger.
TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo

Robert Young, Lancaster University

The 2022 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists for pioneering experiments in quantum mechanics, the theory covering the micro-world of atoms and particles.

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04Oct/22

Nobel prize: Svante Pääbo’s ancient DNA discoveries offer clues as to what makes us human

October 4, 2022ScienceAncient DNA, Anders Götherström, Biology, Branches of biology, Creative Commons, Denisova Cave, Denisovan, Genetic mapping, Genetics, Genomics, Germany, Human evolution, Love Dalén, Neanderthal, SHUTTERSTOCK, Svante Pääbo, Upper Paleolithicadmin

Love Dalén, Stockholm University and Anders Götherström, Stockholm University

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for 2022 has been awarded to Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”.

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Category: Science

How to spot a cyberbot – five tips to keep your device safe