How to tell if your dog is a genius

Canine genius. KristinaSh/Shutterstock.com Anyone who has lived with a dog will know their capacity for learning the meaning of words, even ones you don’t want them to know. How many times have you had to spell the words “walk” or “dinner” in the hope of avoiding an explosion of excitement?Continue Reading

Happiness: why learning, not rewards, may be the key – new research

Learning is rewarding. BalanceFormCreative/Shutterstock Our obsession with happiness isn’t as modern as it may seem. Philosophers from Aristotle to Jeremy Bentham have all argued that subjective wellbeing is crucial. Bentham even suggested that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”.Continue Reading

Making hardware 'open source' can help us fight future pandemics - here's how we get there

elenabsl/Shutterstock In factories and industrial estates across the world, exceptional efforts are being made to ensure hospitals have ventilators, and logistics firms have freezers and refrigerators. Behind the scenes, this manufacturing drive has been taking place on an epic, unprecedented scale. In some places, it’s also been horrendously inefficient. SomeContinue Reading

Virgin Orbit launched a rocket from a plane - here's how

Lift off. Virgin Orbit/Greg Robinson, CC BY-SA Earlier this month, ten cubesats – small, cheap satellites weighing about a kilogram each – were sent into orbit around Earth. With almost 1,500 of these small satellites launched so far, adding another ten might seem trivial. But this was no ordinary launch.Continue Reading