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Coronavirus scams: the science of how to spot and deal with nuisance callers
Shutterstock/GaudiLab Most of us have experienced unwanted calls at home. This is in spite of efforts by regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom, whose most recent report shows that around half of the UK population still receive nuisance calls. Many of these unsolicited calls annoy us because theyContinue Reading
How young black people in care made their voices heard
Ahturner/Shutterstock The rediscovery of the UK’s black histories is long overdue. This includes the lives of young black people in care. Their story reflects the historical struggles of other black groups in making themselves heard – a struggle which underlies the current Black Lives Matter protests. My research has examinedContinue Reading
Digital homeschooling: we need to rethink our worries about children’s screen time
Oleksandr Zamuruiev/Shutterstock We’ve spent the last decade being anxious about the increasing amount of time young people spend in front of screens. However, in the last two months, children have been encouraged to dive into digital like never before. This has thrown up all kinds of questions about how toContinue Reading
Social media helps reveal people’s racist views – so why don’t tech firms do more to stop hate speech?
GoodStudio/Shutterstock This article contains examples of racist, Islamophobic and threatening language Twitter has finally permanently removed right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins from its platform for violating its “hateful conduct” policy. Many would ask why it took so long for Twitter to ban someone with such a long record of offensive comments.Continue Reading
Coronavirus: our study suggests more people have had it than previously estimated
People Image Studio Many people suspect they’ve been infected with COVID-19 by now, despite the fact that only 0.5% of the UK’s population has actually been diagnosed with it. Similar numbers have been reported in other countries. Exactly how many people have actually had it, however, is unclear. There isContinue Reading
Coronavirus: Germany’s new local lockdown is a warning not a disaster
German authorities have had to take the difficult decision of reimposing a pandemic lockdown in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after a resurgence of the coronavirus. This comes after the country’s R number, a measure of how quickly new cases of the disease are emerging, almost tripled over the courseContinue Reading
New Stonehenge discovery: how we found a prehistoric monument hidden in data
Archaeologists studying the monument site from above ground. University of Bradford The chances of finding another major archaeological monument near Stonehenge today are probably very small given the generations of work that has gone into studying the site. Stumbling across such a monument that measured more than 2km across mustContinue Reading
Could we extract energy from a black hole? Our experiment verifies old theory
Rotating black holes suck up anything that gets near enough. muratart/shutterstock A rotating black hole is such an extreme force of nature that it drags surrounding time and space around with it. So it is only natural to ask whether black holes could be used as some sort of energyContinue Reading
How to make your house and garden more tranquil – tips from an acoustics expert
Pexels Many of us have been spending more time at home than ever before, and chances are unless you live by yourself in the middle of nowhere, at some point unwanted noise will have infiltrated your lockdown. Whether it’s cars passing nearby, a neighbour’s blaring music or the constant droneContinue Reading
Coronavirus: could it be burning out after 20% of a population is infected?
Is coronavirus over in some cities? StreetVJ/Shutterstock More than half a million people have died from COVID-19 globally. It is a major tragedy, but perhaps not on the scale some initially feared. And there are finally signs that the pandemic is shuddering in places, as if its engine is runningContinue Reading