Science (Page 81)

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. Because of the fast moving and uncertain nature of the pandemic, it is difficult to predict with any certainty how many beds will be required, even over a relatively short timescale. One option would be to reduce admissions of non-COVID patients, but that is normally a last resort. Faced with an unexpected rise in admissions, senior managers responsible for hospital bed planning have relatively few levers at their disposal. Unfortunately, unforeseenContinue 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 hoaxes they encounter online. The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern about a global misinformation “infodemic” in February 2020, recognising that the COVID-19 pandemic would be fought both on the ground and on social media. That’s because an effective vaccine roll out will rely on high vaccine confidence, and viral misinformation can adversely affect that confidence, leading to vaccine hesitancy. We recently published a large study which found that higher beliefContinue 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 groups “to correct so much fake news”. Some of the disinformation is religiously targeted with messages falsely claiming the vaccines contain animal produce like pork and beef which goes against the religious beliefs of Muslims and Hindus, respectively. The issue of language is key because most warnings about misinformation online are in a written format. Take Facebook’s adoption of new alerts supported by independent fact-checkers, for example. They warn users ofContinue 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 new technologies have fallen. To drive growth in a post-pandemic world, we should remember that real economic progress has in the past been driven by hard science – not flashy consumer gadgetry. For years, hopes for productivity growth have been pinned on “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and 3D-printing. But, in contrast to previous industrial revolutions, recent advances in digital technologyContinue 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. The first one, from 2003, is probably the most photogenic moment of “neuro-atheism”. Biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins travelled to the lab of Canadian neuroscientist Michael Persinger in the hope of having a religious experience. In this BBC Horizon film, God on the Brain, a retro science-fiction helmet was placed on Dawkins head. This “god helmet” generated weak magnetic fields, applied to the temporal lobes. Richard Dawkins. CC BY-SA Persinger hadContinue 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 groups “to correct so much fake news”. Some of the disinformation is religiously targeted with messages falsely claiming the vaccines contain animal produce like pork and beef which goes against the religious beliefs of Muslims and Hindus, respectively. The issue of language is key because most warnings about misinformation online are in a written format. Take Facebook’s adoption of new alerts supported by independent fact-checkers, for example. They warn users ofContinue 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 jokes into more ambiguous, shocking and potentially harmful viral content. That’s especially true of memes that call into question the efficacy and safety of vaccines — often termed “anti-vax” content. Anti-vaccination sentiment is not a new phenomenon, but is increasingly fuelled by online misinformation. Unfounded claims proliferate online, linking vaccines to disease development, or presenting COVID-19 as a hoax. When they go viral, such conspiracy theories present a major obstacle toContinue 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 to people. But not all emerging pathogens have it so easy. Satellites are a peculiar group of tiny pathogens that hijack unrelated viruses (called their “helpers”) to spread. Satellites are notorious because they can make the disease caused by their helper viruses more severe. One example is the hepatitis delta virus, better known as hepatitis D or HDV, which is the only satellite known to cause illness in humans. Hepatitis DContinue 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 a distinct psychiatric condition among people who accumulate excessive amounts of objects to the point that it prevents them living a normal life. Now, research has begun to recognise that hoarding can be a problem in the digital world, too. Read more: For some people, anxiety and phobias are taken to extremes A case study published in the British Medical Journal in 2015 described a 47-year-old man who, as well asContinue Reading

Coordinated brains. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock Many people across the world are still living under tough restrictions or lockdowns because of the pandemic, staying home as much as possible. This means that a lot of parents are spending more time than ever with their children. But how do you turn that time into a deeper relationship? New research, simultaneously measuring brain activity of parents and children, offers some insights. To effectively interact with others, we must establish an emotional connection as well as swiftly and accurately infer each other’s goals and intentions. Research shows that this works best if we coordinate our behaviour and bodily responses. Luckily, we have a natural tendency to get in sync with others. For example, we automaticallyContinue Reading