Category: Technology

Humans are naturally afraid of the dark. We sometimes imagine monsters under the bed and walk faster down unlit streets at night. To conquer our fears, we may leave a night light on to scare away the monsters and a light over the porch to deter break-ins. Yet, in huddling for safety under our pools […]

When people think about artificial intelligence (AI), they may have visions of the future. But AI is already here. At its base, it is the recreation of aspects of human intelligence in computerised form. Like human intelligence, it has wide application. Voice-operated personal assistants like Siri, self-driving cars, and text and image generators all use […]

Cancer is often seen as a disease that arises from genetic mutations causing cells to divide uncontrollably and invade other parts of the body. But the spread of cells away from their origins is actually a normal process in some cases. The embryo burrows into the uterus during early pregnancy. Immune cells spread from lymph […]

There is no doubt when we say that the pandemic has changed the world drastically as an increasingly large number of people feel isolated. Working from home has become the “new norm,” and things like constant emails and social media can get us more stressed than before. If you, too, are someone who has been […]

If you’ve ever flipped through the pages of a women’s lifestyle magazine, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled onto a quiz promising to answer the question “what is your love language?”. Or if social media is more your speed, there’s no shortage of tweets, memes, GIFs and TikToks bringing the concept of “love languages” into […]

In 2020, a chance discovery near the small South African hamlet of Misgund in the Eastern Cape unearthed an unusual parcel – a gift to science. The parcel turned out to be a 500-year-old cow horn, capped with a leather lid and carefully wrapped in grass and the leafy scales of a Bushman poison bulb […]

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. Why does the Earth spin? Sara H., age 5, New Paltz, New York A globe was the first thing I ever bought with my own money. I was maybe 5 […]

The AI revolution is afoot. Like the steam engine, combustion engine, and computer revolution before it, artificial intelligence will undoubtedly profoundly impact how humans work and live. One of the most exciting advances in AI development is deep learning, which powers a range of technologies from facial recognition to self-driving cars. Though many people are […]

When you start to notice them, psychopaths seem to be everywhere. This is especially true of people in powerful places. By one estimate, as many as 20% of business leaders have “clinically relevant levels” of psychopathic tendencies – despite the fact as little as 1% of the general population are considered psychopaths. Psychopaths are characterised […]

Librarians are the curators of creativity. They collect success stories and share it with the world. Traditionally, the success was from published authors, which libraries shared with the local community. More recently, the model has been flipped: libraries have started to collect from the local community to share with everyone. In academic libraries, this is […]