Category: Technology

One of my favourite summer pastimes is enjoying a cold beer in a bar with friends after work. But not just any beer – it has to be a lager. And I am not alone. With its crisp and refreshing profile, lager accounts for more than 90% of the global beer market. However, all lager […]

The start of the new English Premier League (EPL) football season is seeing further changes to the way VAR (the video assistant referee) is operated. VAR was introduced to the EPL in 2019 in an attempt to reduce the number of incorrect refereeing decisions, including offsides – but its use is still much criticised. Video […]

Warfare is no longer confined to physical battlefields. In the digital age, a new front has emerged – cyberspace. Here, countries clash not with bullets and bombs, but with lines of code and sophisticated malware. One of the most recent examples came to light in May this year, when an estimated 270,000 payroll records belonging […]

People have pondered whether dreams have a purpose throughout human history. Modern scientists are fascinated with this question too. For a long time the science of dreams has oscillated between fringe research and the mainstream. But creative study designs and new technology are transforming it into an exciting and serious research niche. Here are four […]

Have you been to the beach this summer? I took my daughter there the other day and got her a pasty for lunch. She was happily munching it while staring out to sea, back turned to the café where we bought the pasty. Suddenly, there was a flapping of wings behind us and something swooping […]

Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore must have heaved a sigh of relief when they opened the hatch and floated into the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6 2024. It was the first time the Starliner spacecraft they arrived on had ever carried people. Built by aerospace manufacturing giant Boeing, Starliner had become the […]

We all imitate one another in conversation. We use similar gestures, our accents converge, our tones of voice align, and we mirror each other’s facial expressions. But, as my team’s recent study showed, subtle differences in the way we mirror each other can reveal a lot about our identities and even divides between classes. Specifically, […]

In a new study, we have sequenced DNA from a Christian community in medieval Spain that lived in artificial caves carved into a rocky outcrop. This is one of several medieval cave communities known to have lived on the Iberian peninsula – which includes both Portugal and Spain. Why these groups favoured caves over more […]

As we grieve the loss of a pet, we may not be the only ones feeling the pain. Research is showing that cats who are left behind when another animal in their home dies could be mourning along with us. Grief is a well-documented human response to loss – but its roots may be far […]

The African rail (Rallus caerulescens) is a handsome bird, with a blueish breast, red legs, eyes and bill, prominent barring on the flanks, chestnut upper parts, and long toes. It also has a characteristic trilling call. This wetland dweller is only found in sub-Saharan Africa, with a concentration in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The […]