Science (Page 30)

It's hard to tell whether or not snow is on its way in the UK RTimages/Shutterstock Cold winter weather in the UK almost always brings with it talk of snow. British people tend to approach weather forecasts of snow with a combination of excitement and trepidation. Who doesn’t like the sight of unspoilt snow glittering over the rooftops like a Christmas card? But not many people enjoy the aftermath – an ice slush nightmare, soaking up the dirt from our streets and roads. Forecasting snow is tricky in Britain though. And predictions tend to be uncertain. By the time British people reach adulthood, particularly those who live in southern England, a lot learn to treat forecasts of snow with cynicism.Continue Reading

Beautiful landscape/Shutterstock If 1,500 captive mammals suffocated to death in a zoo, their suffering would spark an outcry. So when a Berlin hotel aquarium exploded at the end of 2022, why did so few people comment on the welfare of the fish? Aquatic species don’t seem to induce the same emotional response. And this disparity is clouding our understanding of their lives in captivity. After decades of studying sentience in fish (that is, their capacity to experience feelings and sensations), the consensus among scientists is that fish can feel pain. Pain in humans has an important emotional component, and the same appears to be true in fish, which are also capable of anxiety and fear. This, along with converging evidenceContinue Reading

ChatGPT is a powerful language model developed by OpenAI that has the ability to generate human-like text, making it capable of engaging in natural language conversations. This technology has the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers, and it has already begun to be integrated into various industries. However, the implementation of ChatGPT in the field of higher education in the UK poses a number of challenges that must be carefully considered. If ChatGPT is used to grade assignments or exams, there is the possibility that it could be biased against certain groups of students. For example, ChatGPT may be more likely to give higher grades to students who write in a style that it is more familiarContinue Reading

Triff/Shutterstock Lightning may look beautiful but every year it kills thousands of people, does huge amounts of damage to buildings and infrastructure, and causes power outages. The only protection we have is lightning rods, which were invented 300 years ago and only protect a small area. The cost of damage from lightning strikes to buildings is hard to determine globally, but insurance company payouts to cover repairs to homes and businesses were roughly US$2 billion (£1.6 billion) in 2020 in the US. Insurance data from the UK suggests the costs of covering lightning strikes are increasing. Swiss scientists used a laser to move lightning. Martin Stollberg/© TRUMPF The problem is only likely to get worse as the climate crisis isContinue Reading

Malware is designed to hide in your device Jaiz Anuar/Shutterstock 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. Bot is short for robot. But cyberbots don’t look like the robots of science fiction such as R2-D2. They are software applications that perform repetitive tasks they have been programmed to do. They only become malicious when a human operator (a “botmaster”) usesContinue Reading

Understanding paw preference. Shutterstock/In Green The vast majority of people use one hand or the other for most things – and for nearly 90% of the human population this is the right hand. Some 10% to 13% of humans are left-handed, with men being three times more likely to be left-handed than women, though very few people are ambidextrous. Until relatively recently, it was assumed that “handedness” was unique to humans, but studies of animals suggest that “handedness” may be a fundamental feature of all mammals. What is less clear is how this is displayed in animals and whether this is the same as human handedness. A wide array of tests have been developed in an effort to determine whetherContinue Reading

lewan/Shutterstock Plants have colonised the vast majority of the Earth’s surface. So what is the key to their success? People often think of plants as simple, senseless life forms. They may live rooted in one place, but the more scientists learn about plants, the more complex and responsive we realise they are. They are excellent at adapting to local conditions. Plants are specialists, making the most of what is close by to where they germinate. Learning about the intricacies of plant life is about more than inspiring wonder in people though. Studying plants is also about making sure we can still grow crops in the future as climate change makes our weather increasingly extreme. Environmental signals shape the growth andContinue Reading

Pixabay Are you a doom scroller or a frequent Tweeter? Do you pass the time by flicking endlessly through others’ posts on social networking sites, or perhaps you use these platforms to share your own content? Psychologists believe our style of social media usage has important effects on our psychological wellbeing, but we’ve struggled to measure people’s online behaviour accurately – until now. It’s estimated that more than 4 billion people use social media worldwide, which is expected to rise to a staggering 6 billion by 2027. Although many people consider social media to be a good thing, helping us to connect with vast social networks, others argue that replacing meaningful, real-world interactions with virtual ones is having negative effectsContinue Reading

Dr Sarah Mothulatshipi and Topo Mpho Çhengeta in Gweta, Botswana exchanging knowledge with the local community about long term environmental change and stone age archaeology in the area. Sallie Burrough, Author provided “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. Researchers sometimes carry out fieldwork with minimum local engagement, dropping in and extracting their data like the well-trained crew of a military Chinook. So-called “helicopter research”, where research teams rarely enable local collaborators to steer research-design and often fail to involve localContinue Reading

Chemists are often the unsung heroes of scientific breakthroughs that change our lives Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock Real-world technology is often foretold by science fiction. In 1927, characters in the film Metropolis made video calls to each other. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hung flat-screen colour monitors on the walls of the Enterprise decades before we did the same in our living rooms. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. The most obvious examples of technology in science fiction tend to focus on artificial intelligence, communication and transport. But futuristic chemistry is embraced by sci-fi writers too. For example, a central feature of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World is a chemical antidepressant. In recentContinue Reading