Science (Page 78)

All eyes on Mars. Kevin Gill/Flickr Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth. The race between several nations and private companies, however, is far from over. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit – the rover won’t land until May — will mark another crucial milestone for more than one reason. MarsContinue Reading

Albert Einstein photographed on a trip to America in the wake of his Nobel prize-winning discoveries. Harris & Ewing/PICRYL A century ago, an upstart German physicist by the name of Albert Einstein turned the scientific world on its head with his discovery of the photoelectric effect, which proved light to be both a particle and a wave. Awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics for his work, Einstein would later contribute to theories related to nuclear fusion and fission – arguably paving the way for the invention and detonation of nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear energy. And so, when elements previously unknown to science were discovered in the chemical debris of a nuclear explosion 69 years ago, it wasContinue Reading

Happiness is complex. Rido/Shutterstock We’re living in difficult and uncertain times, and are constantly reminded to stay resilient in the face of adversity. In fact, tips on how to stay strong and handle unexpected setbacks by recovering – and even growing as a person – are being thrown at us left, right and centre. This sort of thing can be helpful, but we must first ask ourselves, what does it really mean to be resilient – and what good does it do? Over the past two decades there has been a huge shift in psychology from a focus on individual risk and vulnerability to one of personal strength and capacity. Around 85% of all the studies on resilience have beenContinue Reading

Prixel Creative/Shutterstock It’s 7:30am on a Monday morning and you’re trying to get your little darlings out of the house for school. The week has only just begun but already you can feel your temper being tested: your children appear to be physically incapable of getting dressed. You put on a nice faux smile and implore them through gritted teeth to “get dressed right now”. Despite your best efforts, though, somehow your real emotions have shone through: your children have started to cry. This situation will be familiar to many parents – myself included. Numerous times, I’ve tried to conceal how I’m really feeling when talking to my daughter by “putting on a brave face” that I hope masks myContinue Reading

Canine genius. KristinaSh/Shutterstock.com Anyone who has lived with a dog will know their capacity for learning the meaning of words, even ones you don’t want them to know. How many times have you had to spell the words “walk” or “dinner” in the hope of avoiding an explosion of excitement? Previous studies have investigated how non-human animals, including chimpanzees, sea lions and rhesus monkeys, learn words. But now a paper published in Nature shows some dogs learn the name of a new object after hearing it only four times, an ability previously thought to be confined to humans. The researchers found this ability was not common among all the dogs studied, instead it may be limited to a few “talented”Continue Reading

In the future, robots we've programmed may evolve and multiply on distant planets. SquareMotion/Shutterstock It’s been suggested that an advance party of robots will be needed if humans are ever to settle on other planets. Sent ahead to create conditions favourable for humankind, these robots will need to be tough, adaptable and recyclable if they’re to survive within the inhospitable cosmic climates that await them. Collaborating with roboticists and computer scientists, my team and I have been working on just such a set of robots. Produced via 3D printer – and assembled autonomously – the robots we’re creating continually evolve in order to rapidly optimise for the conditions they find themselves in. Our work represents the latest progress towards theContinue Reading

The storming of the Red Fort in Delhi on January 26 marked an escalation of tensions between the Indian government – led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – and farmers who have been protesting against agricultural reforms since August 2020. With footage of the farmers clashing with police going viral, the Red Fort incident also marked a spike in interest in the farmers’ movement around the world, much to Modi’s embarrassment. The authorities’ response to events at the Red Fort – a historic building symbolic of Indian independence, and located in the very heart of Old Delhi – was swift. Delhi Police shut down the city’s internet, affecting more than 52 million mobile phone subscribers. The shutdown was ostensibly inContinue Reading

Learning is rewarding. BalanceFormCreative/Shutterstock Our obsession with happiness isn’t as modern as it may seem. Philosophers from Aristotle to Jeremy Bentham have all argued that subjective wellbeing is crucial. Bentham even suggested that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”. This approach informs the policies of many nations who deploy population measures of wellbeing. But the goal of increasing societal happiness has proved difficult to achieve. This is in part because it is difficult to determine what factors are most relevant for happiness. For example, many people believe they would be happier if only they had more money, but events such as winning the lottery or receiving a large payContinue Reading

riggleton/Shutterstock Working from home as a parent, a touchscreen device can be a marvellous tool. Pass one to your child, and they’ll be quietly occupied for your Zoom meeting, or for the crunch time as you approach an important deadline. Yet touchscreens can also feel like a tradeoff for parents, who have long feared that screen time may be harmful for their childrens’ development. Our three-year study following children from the age of one to three-and-a-half measured the link between touchscreen use and toddlers’ attention. For the first time, we were able to show that toddlers who used touchscreens were less able to avoid distractions when completing a task on a screen than toddlers with no or low daily touchscreenContinue Reading

elenabsl/Shutterstock In factories and industrial estates across the world, exceptional efforts are being made to ensure hospitals have ventilators, and logistics firms have freezers and refrigerators. Behind the scenes, this manufacturing drive has been taking place on an epic, unprecedented scale. In some places, it’s also been horrendously inefficient. Some of that inefficiency is only to be expected. Manufacturing responsively at such short notice was always going to be messy. But many of the hardware hold-ups we’ve witnessed – from production line bottlenecks to parts shortages – could be avoided in the future by applying an “open source” ethos to the world’s production of hardware. Read more: Five ways collective intelligence can help beat coronavirus in developing countries Open sourceContinue Reading