Category: Technology

For decades, astronomers have been watching WOH G64, an enormous heavyweight star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. This star is more than 1,500 times larger than the Sun and emitting over 100,000 times more energy. For a long time, red supergiant WOH G64 looked […]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness, most recently in Minnesota. The violence is shocking. So are the intrusions on digital rights and civil liberties. For example, immigration agents are routinely scanning faces of people they suspect of unlawful presence in the country – 100,000 times, […]

Kyrylo Glivin/Shutterstock While we have sent probes billions of kilometres into interstellar space, humans have barely scratched the surface of our own planet, not even making it through the thin crust. Information about Earth’s deep interior comes mainly from geophysics and is at a premium. We know it consists of a solid crust, a rocky […]

The Lunar Gateway is planned space station that will orbit the Moon. It is part of the Nasa‑led Artemis programme. Artemis aims to return humans to the Moon, establishing a sustainable presence there for scientific and commercial purposes, and eventually reach Mars. However, the modular space station now faces delays, cost concerns and potential US […]

Research England has published an independent report by Tony Hickson, Chief Business Officer at Cancer Research UK, following his review of relationships between universities and investors. The UK research and innovation sector has much to celebrate. It has the leading start-up ecosystem in Europe and is second only to the US in the value generated from […]

The Gates of Lodore mark the beginning of the Green River's path through the Uinta Mountains. Scott Alan Ritchie / shutterstock The western US is a geologists’ dream, home to the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, active volcanoes and striking sandstone arches. But one landform simply doesn’t make sense. Rivers normally flow around barriers. The […]

The Science and Technology Facillities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre and Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust are using advanced digital technologies to develop a smart staff scheduling system that will ease staff rota planning, reduce clinician admin, and support staff wellbeing. The work is the first phase of a new strategic agreement to collaborate using […]

Triff/Shutterstock Some of the best-known medicines come from poisonous plants. The chemotherapy drug taxol comes from the yew tree, morphine from the opium poppy and digoxin from the foxglove. These plants can have lethal toxicity if taken in their raw form. Digoxin is prescribed to treat angina at doses a thousand times more dilute than […]

New policing proposals include raising the number of live facial recognition vans in England and Wales from ten to 50. Mounir Taha/Shutterstock The UK government’s proposed reforms to policing in England and Wales signal an increase in the use of facial recognition technology. The number of live facial recognition vans is set to rise from […]

JRdes/Shutterstock When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, he articulated his dream for the internet to unlock creativity and collaboration on a global scale. But he also wondered “whether it will be a technical dream or a legal nightmare”. History has answered that question with a troubling “both”. The 2003 Broadway musical Avenue Q […]