Science (Page 38)

Frame Stock Footage The invention of the world wide web in 1989 eventually brought about life-changing tools for everyone who can access it. Some of these tools, such as online banking, shopping and communication, have vastly improved the accessibility of daily life for people with disabilities, as well as older people. The concept of virtual mobility has long been used to describe how the internet can provide an accessible alternative to activities that usually require physical mobility. Virtual mobility was in full swing during the pandemic, as work, entertainment and socialising efficiently moved online. The metaverse – the next phase of the internet powered by virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) – has the potential to take things evenContinue Reading

Barristers may be set to swap their wigs for electroencephalograms. DC Studio/Shutterstock Cognitively enhanced lawyers may one day work in our courts. A recent report from The Law Society of England and Wales suggests the rapidly advancing field of neural technology could create “digitally enhanced” super-lawyers capable of focusing more keenly or accessing case law via an implant. The report is broad and far-reaching, describing some of the most recent advances in neural technology. It also sets out many of the ways that neural technology could affect the practice and enforcement of law in the future. Read more: It’s not my fault, my brain implant made me do it Some of these possibilities are unlikely to occur any time soon.Continue Reading

Alex Jones claimed being deplatformed hurt his income. Vic Hinterlang/Shutterstock Conspiracy theorist and US far-right media personality Alex Jones was recently ordered to pay US$45 million (£37 million) damages to the family of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones had claimed that being banned or “deplatformed” from major social media sites for his extreme views negatively affected him financially, likening the situation to “jail”. But during the trial, forensic economist Bernard Pettingill estimated Jones’s conspiracy website InfoWars made more money after being banned from Facebook and Twitter in 2018. So does online deplatforming actually work? It’s not possible to measure influence in a scientifically rigorous way so it’s difficult to say what happens to aContinue Reading

Thomas Hochreutener/Shutterstock Late summer is all about BBQs, ice creams and parents counting down the days until schools open. Then along comes a wasp. There’s some screaming and flapping (mostly by the parents). Usually, no one gets stung and the wasp disappears. And yet we treat the arrival of this small insect at our picnic as if a tarantula has invited itself to tea. It’s no surprise we act this way. Every summer, newspapers shower us with headlines about the horrors of wasps. As a wasp expert, I am inundated with calls from the media at the end of August, asking me to explain why wasps ruin our late summer fun. This summer is even worse. This time, newspapers areContinue Reading

It's never long before the maddening refrain from the back seats. Travel_Master/Shutterstock As we approach the end of the school holidays, parents across the country are saying the same thing: “If I had a pound for every time I heard ‘are we nearly there yet?’, I’d be rich.” Having three young children myself, I know only too well the feeling of dread when, 30 minutes into a five-hour drive, the interrogation begins. In our family, it starts quite politely. “Mummy, are we nearly there yet?” drifts over from the back seats. But this approach is rapidly replaced by an aggressive cross-examination, picking apart how much longer I previously said was left of the journey versus how long I am currentlyContinue Reading

The amount of information online is overwhelming. Shyntartanya From the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, misinformation is rife worldwide. Many tools have been designed to help people spot misinformation. The problem with most of them is how hard they are to deliver at scale. But we may have found a solution. In our new study we designed and tested five short videos that “prebunk” viewers, in order to inoculate them from the deceptive and manipulative techniques often used online to mislead people. Our study is the largest of its kind and the first to test this kind of intervention on YouTube. Five million people were shown the videos, of which one million watched them. We found that notContinue Reading