Category: Technology

How was iron produced 2,000 years ago in Senegal? A recent study at the Didé West 1 archaeological site, in the Falémé Valley in eastern Senegal, sheds light on an ancient iron production technique. Passed down from generation to generation for nearly eight centuries, this technology appears to have been developed to meet local needs. […]

Each of us tells a story about who we are, often tracing our identity back through an imagined line of ancestors. Though identity is fundamentally cultural, we tend to anchor it in biology – in the idea of a stable genetic inheritance passed down through generations. Population genomics has exposed a history far more complex, […]

In the first landmark publication of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV has addressed recent advances in artificial intelligence by focusing on the threat it poses to workers, social justice and “the dignity of persons”. Presenting his first papal encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), at the Vatican on May 25, Leo declared: “Artificial intelligence needs to […]

More than 2 000 years ago, the Library of Alexandria in Egypt stood as a symbol of knowledge and discovery in the ancient world. But it was never just a place to store scrolls. It was a meeting point, a place where scholars gathered, debated ideas and built new knowledge together. Today, libraries across Europe are […]

Mahir Asadli / Shutterstock The world we live in today runs on batteries. But the lithium ion batteries that dominate the market are expensive and environmentally demanding to extract. The raw materials for lithium ion batteries are scarce and concentrated in a few geographical regions. This places continued pressure on supply chains. Sodium-ion batteries are […]

An Irish Air Corps helicopter extinguishing a wildfire in Howth, Dublin, in 2023. Thomas Halpin/Shutterstock The most destructive wildfire season on record in Europe was in 2025, with more than one million hectares burned and tens of thousands of people displaced by fires across the continent. For people in Ireland and Britain, the type of […]

All-female animal groups including the Amazon molly fish, Komodo dragon and hammerhead shark. LifeonWhite/sketchify/EllesRijsdijk/MikhailRudenko/rockptarmigan/Nigel Marsh/KenGriffiths(Canva); GriffinGillespie x2 (Shutterstock) It may sound too bizarre to be true but the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), a fish that inhabits rivers, lakes and swamps in Mexico and Texas, exists over much of its range in populations that are 100% […]

Misleading information online is often treated as a technical glitch, something that better algorithms or stricter moderation can fix. But research points to a more complex reality. That is, the rise of “misfluencers”, individuals who shape how information is interpreted, shared and trusted across digital platforms. Whether acting deliberately or not, they tap into emotion, […]

In the early 1990s, crime-loving television audiences could choose mainly between cozy, fictional detective series such as Columbo and Murder, She Wrote. The US docuseries Unsolved Mysteries brought a few real cold-case investigations to light, but coverage of forensic science on screen was still relatively simple. Then, in May 1991, The Silence of the Lambs […]

When imagining our early human ancestors in prehistoric Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, one might envision trekkers plodding across a savanna, baking under an equatorial sun. Research, however, suggests that our species’ unique strengths – creativity, cooperation and adaptability – may have been honed in a very different environment. Our team of archaeologists […]