Pipebots will inspect the walls for cracks. Human Studio, Author provided Hidden from sight, under the UK’s roads, buildings and parks, lies about one million kilometres of pipes. Maintaining and repairing these pipes require about 1.5 million road excavations a year, which causes either full or partial road closures. TheseContinue Reading
As Vice President Kamala Harris settles into her first full week in the White House, thousands are heading online to celebrate her groundbreaking achievement. Unfortunately, thousands more are flooding social media with sexualised, transphobic, and racist posts which continue to highlight the particular abuse faced by female politicians online. MyContinue Reading
Various types of astronaut assistant are in development. Michal Bednarek/shutterstock.com Artificial intelligence has been making waves in recent years, enabling us to solve problems faster than traditional computing could ever allow. Recently, for example, Google’s artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind developed AlphaFold2, a program which solved the protein-folding problem. This isContinue Reading
Whale sharks are the ocean's biggest fish. jjsupasit srisawthsak/shutterstock.com The biggest fish in the ocean, whale sharks, are incredible animals. They can reach lengths of over 18 metres and weigh more than 19,000kg. Each shark has a unique pattern of spots on its body, like a fingerprint. The number ofContinue Reading
Dinosaur fossils have always amazed with their horns and spikes, enchanting us with elongated necks and foot-long teeth. But less attention has been paid to the dinosaur derriere – for reasons of taste, maybe, but also because it’s difficult to find a well-preserved bottom in the fossil record of ourContinue Reading
Spitting cobras use their venom for defence. Stu Porter/shutterstock.com Cobras are fascinating and frightening creatures. These snakes are most well known for their characteristic defence mechanism called hooding, when the sides of their neck flare out in a dramatic display. However, hooding isn’t the only defensive behaviour in a cobra’sContinue Reading
Memory declines with age. Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock The ageing global population is the greatest challenge faced by 21st-century healthcare systems. Even COVID-19 is, in a sense, a disease of ageing. The risk of death from the virus roughly doubles for every nine years of life, a pattern that is almost identicalContinue Reading
Fans of less successful clubs form more of a bond with each other. Motortion Films/shutterstock.com Football fans tend to be highly loyal to their group, just as the kin groups of our ancestral past would have been. This intense state of belonging, when a person feels as one with theirContinue Reading
elRoce/Shutterstock For millions of children, being dragged to a museum is a singularly painful experience, marked by time standing still rather than history coming to life – as it does in the film “Night at the Museum”, starring Ben Stiller. But that all could change with the development of newContinue Reading
How androgynous are you? Thomas Piercy, University of Cambridge., Author provided From advertising to the workplace, it is often assumed that men and women are fundamentally different – from Mars and Venus, respectively. Of course, we all know people who are more androgynous, having a mix of personality traits thatContinue Reading
