The practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint (that actually work)
2021-09-20
Want to know how to reduce your carbon footprint? It’s more complicated than you may imagineContinue Reading
Road pricing could help drive down UK emissions – here’s how to make it work
2021-09-19
Road pricing could be introduced to reduce congestion. Shutterstock Within the next two decades the UK is set for a total switch from petrol and diesel cars to electric cars, which pay virtually no tax. To recoup the around £34bn a year currently collected through fuel and vehicle excise duty,Continue Reading
Sir Clive Sinclair: even his failures were prescient inventions
2021-09-18
Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the UK’s first mass-market home computer, has died at the age of 81. Pioneer of tiny portable devices, truly affordable computers and novel, electric forms of transportation, he leaves behind what some see as a checkered history of hit-and-miss inventions. But Sir Clive’s contribution toContinue Reading
Road pricing could help drive down UK emissions – here’s how to make it work
2021-09-17
Within the next two decades the UK is set for a total switch from petrol and diesel cars to electric cars, which pay virtually no tax. To recoup the around £34bn a year currently collected through fuel and vehicle excise duty, one report has recommended that the most equitable wayContinue Reading
Do the northern lights make sounds that you can hear?
2021-09-16
John A Davis/Shutterstock It’s a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound? Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth’s poles, where theContinue Reading
We discovered the earliest prehistoric art is hand prints made by children
2021-09-15
One of the hand prints discovered in Tibet that is believed to have been made by children. Matthew Bennett, Author provided Fossilised footprints, and more rarely, hand prints, can be found around the world; left as people went about their daily business, preserved by freak acts of geological preservation. InContinue Reading
Rhinos: scientists are hanging them upside-down from helicopters – here’s why
2021-09-14
Each year, a selection of apparently weird and pointless scientific experiments receive the Ig Nobel Prize. Awarded by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the prize honours projects that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. A recent study that suspended rhinos upside-down by their anklesContinue Reading
It’s still not fully understood how placebos work – but an alternative theory of consciousness could hold some clues
2021-09-13
Shutterstock If you’ve had both of your COVID vaccinations, you may have suffered some side-effects – perhaps headaches, fatigue, fever or a sore arm. These effects are mainly caused by your immune system’s reaction to the vaccine. But most scientists agree that there is another cause: the human mind. TheContinue Reading
Exposure of faked dishonesty study makes me proud to be a behavioural scientist
2021-09-12
Lucky Raccoon/Shutterstock The story has a lot to recommend it: psychologist Dan Ariely, the author of a bestselling book on the behavioural science of dishonesty, retracts his study because the data was faked. No wonder it’s been picked up by the world’s media. Buzzfeed declared this “the latest blow toContinue Reading
It’s still not fully understood how placebos work – but an alternative theory of consciousness could hold some clues
2021-09-08
If you’ve had both of your COVID vaccinations, you may have suffered some side-effects – perhaps headaches, fatigue, fever or a sore arm. These effects are mainly caused by your immune system’s reaction to the vaccine. But most scientists agree that there is another cause: the human mind. The abilityContinue Reading