Category: Technology

Young children spend a lot of time using screens: watching television, playing on touchscreen apps, or facetiming with grandparents. In fact, research on global screen time guidelines has found that around 75% of children aged up to two years use some form of digital media daily, and 64% of children aged two to five years […]

The artificial intelligence boom has already changed how we understand technology and the world. But developing and updating AI programs requires a lot of computing power. This relies heavily on servers in data centres, at a great cost in terms of carbon emissions and resource use. One particularly energy intensive task is “training”, where generative […]

In the heart of Isalo National Park in central-southern Madagascar, at least 200km from the sea in any direction, is a remote valley with a mysterious past. This place, Teniky, can only be reached on foot, by hiking through a mountainous region dissected by steep canyons. Isalo area. Guido Schreurs, Author provided (no reuse) Part […]

Celebrities can have huge influence and reach enormous audiences. That’s why Kamala Harris was happy to recently gain the endorsement of musician Taylor Swift. Due to their media attention and massive fan bases, some Hollywood stars and musicians can appear more powerful than traditional politicians. And these perceptions of influence may also translate into actual […]

Ken Murphy, CEO of the British multinational supermarket chain Tesco, recently said at a conference that Tesco “could use Clubcard data to nudge customers towards healthier choices”. So how would this work, and do we want it? Our recent study, published in the Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews, provides an answer. Loyalty schemes have […]

We’ve all found ourselves trying to avoid the swarms of midges that are so common in late summer. But as you try to avoid them, what you may not know is that they are equally keen to avoid each other. It’s strange behaviour for creatures that typically move around together. But physicist Andrew Reynolds from […]

The Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Hartree Centre and Coventry University are to explore opportunities to deliver a national Digital and AI Skills Network for the UK. With an initial focus on the West Midlands, the collaboration will look to understand the current level of understanding and adoption of advanced digital technologies. This will identify […]

It’s now almost two years since Elon Musk concluded his takeover of Twitter (now called X) on 27 October 2022. Since then, the platform has become an increasingly polarised and divisive space. Musk promised to deal with some of the issues which had already frustrated users, particularly bots, abuse and misinformation. In 2023, he said […]

In the last ten years, some 20,000 or so academic papers have been published on the neuroscience of sex and gender. Perhaps you have read the media coverage of such papers, suggesting there’s finally proof that stereotypical abilities such as men being good at reading maps or women excelling at nurturing can be pinpointed in […]

Just as calculators took over the tedious number-crunching in maths a few decades ago, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming coding. Take Kyo, an eight-year-old boy in Singapore who developed a simple platform game in just two hours, attracting over 500,000 players. Using nothing but simple instructions in English, Kyo brought his vision to life leveraging […]