Science (Page 63)

Prostock-studio/Shutterstock The NHS has been struggling for years with chronic underfunding and staff shortages. COVID has only made matters worse. Health Secretary Sajid Javid is now warning that NHS waiting lists for non-emergency operations and procedures could grow to 13 million up from 5.3 million in July 2021 while increasing numbers of patients wait in ambulances outside hospitals. Last week, NHS bosses warned that patients’ lives are at risk because NHS staff are overstretched and exhausted from working through the pandemic. The NHS is still at least 84,000 healthcare workers short. That’s 6.5% of its workforce. The last thing the health service needs right now is to lose tens of thousands of NHS staff, but under a new government policyContinue Reading

Pexels/victor freitas It’s human instinct to avoid suffering and try to make life as comfortable and easy as possible. But paradoxically, a great deal of research has shown that suffering and trauma can have positive long-term effects. Many people who go through intense trauma, for example, become deeper and stronger than they were before. They may even undergo a sudden and radical transformation that makes life more meaningful and fulfilling. Indeed, research shows that between half and one-third of all people experience significant personal development after traumatic events, such as bereavement, serious illness, accidents or divorce. Over time, they may feel a new sense of inner strength and confidence and gratitude for life and other people. They may develop moreContinue Reading

Luciann Photography / Pexels Pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are very welcome – but accurate monitoring across the globe is crucial if we are to meet targets and combat the devastating consequences of global warming. During COP26 in Glasgow, many countries have set out their targets to reach net-zero by the middle of this century. But a serious note of caution was raised in a report in the Washington Post. It revealed that many countries may be under-reporting their emissions, with a gap between actual emissions into the atmosphere and what is being reported to the UN. This is clearly a problem: if we are uncertain about what we are emitting now, we will not know for certain thatContinue Reading

SvedOliver/Shutterstock Language has traditionally been considered a complex skill which mobilises brain networks specifically dedicated to linguistic processing. But in recent years, neuroscience research has returned to this idea and offered new insights. Notably, studies have suggested that areas of the brain which control certain language functions, such as processing the meaning of words, are also involved in the control of fine motor skills. Syntax, the ability to correctly structure words into a sentence, is one of the most important features of language. While evidence had yet to link syntax skills specifically with motor control in the brain, research published in 2019 revealed a correlation between having good syntactic ability and being skilled at using tools. With this in mind,Continue Reading

Probably not… Tithi Luadthong/Shutterstock It has been over a year since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And perhaps the most important lesson is that we were completely unprepared to face the debilitating virus. This raises some scary thoughts. What if the threat wasn’t COVID-19, but a gene-edited pathogen designed to turn us into zombies – ghost-like, agitated creatures with little awareness of our surroundings? With recent advances in gene editing, it may be possible for bioterrorists to design viruses capable of altering our behaviour, spreading such a disease and ultimately killing us. And chances are we still wouldn’t be sufficiently prepared to deal with it. A zombie apocalypse may sound far-fetched, reserved for the annals ofContinue Reading

Artem Oleshko/Shutterstock Facebook has announced that it will stop using its facial recognition system – the artificial intelligence software which recognises people in photos and videos and generates suggestions about who to “tag” in them. Facial recognition systems, like Facebook’s, identify people by matching faces to digital representations of faces stored on a database. Facebook has more than a billion of these representations on file but now says it will delete them. This announcement came barely a week after Facebook’s parent company rebranded itself from Facebook to Meta. The name change reflects the company’s focus on the “metaverse”, a vision for the internet which uses technology like virtual reality to integrate real and digital worlds. The name change probably alsoContinue Reading

Sid Balachandran / Unsplash, CC BY-SA In contrast to the many flamboyant species of birds, most of the 5,000 species of mammals are drab browns or greys. But there are a small number of well known and intriguing exceptions, most notably zebras, skunks, and orcas. Perhaps the most famous of all, however, is the giant panda. We already had a preliminary idea why they had their markings, but wanted to finally confirm the reason for its mysterious pattern. Viewed up close in a zoo, the giant panda is a striking conspicuous mix of a white bear with black forelegs, shoulders and hind legs, and an extraordinary face with black fur around the eyes and ears. By comparing these different partsContinue Reading

Led Gapline/Shutterstock In the wake of Facebook rebranding as Meta, reflecting its focus on the “metaverse”, Microsoft has now announced it, too, will launch into this space. Meta has proposed that the metaverse will eventually allow us to engage across education, work and social contexts, while Microsoft looks to be focusing specifically on the realm of the virtual office for now. But what actually is the metaverse and to what extent should we believe that the vision being presented to us is really going to be central to our daily lives? The idea itself isn’t new. Science fiction author Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, presenting a 3D virtual world in which people,Continue Reading

Done deal? Markus Spiske / Pexels, CC BY-SA Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, we negotiate in every aspect of our daily lives – whether it be persuading a child to eat its vegetables, haggling over a property price, or discussing the terms of a job offer. Negotiation can be viewed as “back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed”. Although we negotiate every day, doing so successfully is often challenging because the context is always different: what you stand to gain or lose, the people involved and their chosen tactics will all differ from one situation to another. Multi-lateral negotiationsContinue Reading