Starfish are one of the most recognisable animals on our planet. Yellowj/shutterstock.com A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and palaeontology: how starfish evolved their arms. Starfish are one of the most recognisable animalsContinue Reading
The UK has fewer critical care beds per capita than the European average. Gorodenkoff/shutterstock.com Coronavirus is causing a strain on health services around the world. Just last week, over 80% of critical care beds in England were full, with warnings of hospitals hitting their limits in the coming days. BecauseContinue Reading
Alexander Limbach/Shutterstock Anti-vaccination groups are projected to dominate social media in the next decade if left unchallenged. To counter their viral misinformation at a time when COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out, our research team has produced a “psychological vaccine” that helps people detect and resist the lies and hoaxesContinue Reading
Shutterstock/dencg A senior doctor in charge of the NHS anti-disinformation campaign has said that language and cultural barriers could be causing people from ethnic minorities to reject the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr Harpreet Sood told the BBC it was “a big concern” and officials were working hard to reach different groupsContinue Reading
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Ten years ago, PayPal founder Peter Thiel condensed the growing sense of disappointment in new technologies down to just nine words. “We wanted flying cars,” he wrote, “instead we got 140 characters”. That these words still ring true a decade later shows just how far short of expectations newContinue Reading
Do atheists think differently? patrice6000/Shutterstock The cognitive study of religion has recently reached a new, unknown land: the minds of unbelievers. Do atheists think differently from religious people? Is there something special about how their brains work? To illustrate what they’ve found, I will focus on three key snapshots. TheContinue Reading
Shutterstock/dencg A senior doctor in charge of the NHS anti-disinformation campaign has said that language and cultural barriers could be causing people from ethnic minorities to reject the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr Harpreet Sood told the BBC it was “a big concern” and officials were working hard to reach different groupsContinue Reading
Don/KnowYourMeme For most of us, memes are the harmless fodder of an “extremely online” internet culture, floating benignly between different social media platforms — and, on the whole, making us laugh. But in the shadier corners of the internet, like on the forum 4chan, memes can quickly mutate from jokesContinue Reading
Vampire bats, a commonly deltavirus-infected host, feed on the blood of other mammals. Belizar/Shutterstock Pandemics past and present have been caused when pathogens – germs that cause disease – move between animals and humans, as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) did when it made its way from bats toContinue Reading
rawf8/Shutterstock How many emails are in your inbox? If the answer is thousands, or if you often struggle to find a file on your computer among its cluttered hard drive, then you might be classed as a digital hoarder. In the physical world, hoarding disorder has been recognised as aContinue Reading
