Earlier this week the publisher Macmillan announced (in somewhat breathless prose) that subscribers to 49 of its Nature journals would be able to share links to the full text of articles that would otherwise…
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Your autonomous vacuum cleaner cleans your floors and there is no great harm if it occasionally bounces into things or picks up a button or a scrap of paper with a phone number. But then again this latter…
Computer Weekly has released its Tech Top 50 of current UK leaders in IT: people whose influence affects us all in various ways, or who are developing new technologies to change our lives now, or in the…
On an overcast afternoon in London in May 2013, an off-duty soldier named Lee Rigby was murdered near his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby’s killers were two young British men of Nigerian…
After a 24-hour delay due to bad weather, the first test launch of the Orion spacecraft by NASA is underway with the ultimate goal of putting human beings on Mars. Weeks after the landing on a comet by…
I love my job. I’m trying to understand how plants build themselves out of thin air. It’s exciting, it’s creative, it’s beautiful and on top of all that it’s important and useful. I like working with other…
Great tits are opportunistic copycats. Entire populations can be found performing the same arbitrary behaviour simply because birds copy one another, following a fashion. And it’s this behaviour, reported…
With a “win-at-all-costs” culture firmly embedded in elite sport, coaches are increasingly turning to technology in attempts to zoom in on the slightest deficiencies perceived to be thwarting the performance…
Telephone companies have yet again announced inflation-busting increases in telephone line rental charges. Why, in a world that is increasingly mobile-first – or even mobile-only – are we still paying…
The world is already short of computer security experts, but by 2017 that shortfall is going to have reached about two million. Criminal hackers cause damage running to billions of pounds every year…
Any verbal exchange – whether a scientific panel discussion, lovers quarrelling in a hallway, or the political hard-talk of a live interview – is a very sophisticated human activity. Besides the intricate…
Alan Turing is one of the world’s best-known mathematicians, and probably the best known in the past century. This is partly for his work on cracking German codes in World War II, and partly for his arrest…
Species must reproduce to survive, and animals have found unique ways of achieving this. For some, including us, it seems as though producing a few offspring that require extended care is the best strategy…
The Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill introduced in the UK parliament this week is designed to place legal requirements on certain businesses to retain information about user communications. It has its…
The tragic death of 25-year-old Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes after he was hit on the back of the head by a cricket ball has shocked followers of the sport around the world and raised questions about…
Lee Rigby’s sister stated in The Sun that Facebook had “blood on their hands” over her brother’s murder in May 2013, following the publication of a report by the Intelligence and Security Committee. The…
On November 22, the national police non-emergency 101 and the NHS 111 services suffered disruption as a result of a technical fault in the Vodafone national network. This meant that people wishing to report…
Home Secretary Theresa May is giving new powers to the police, which will enable them to clearly identify who is using a computer or mobile phone at a given time. Putting the politics of national security…
The UK Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has drawn attention to a webcam-monitoring Russian website, which offers thousands of private video streams, raising fears of unwitting and continuous…
Telescopes have come a long way since the days when they were all about lone astronomers watching the night sky through their upstairs windows. Today teams of astrophysicists build and use much more modern…
The computer-security firm Symantec says it may have found some of the most sophisticated malicious software ever made. The cyber-espionage bug, called Regin, has been making attacks for many years without…
We have always been been intrigued by keeping secrets and uncovering the secrets of others, whether that’s childhood secret messages, or secrets and codebreaking of national importance. With a film, The…
If cars with drivers still suffer under gridlock conditions on roads, how will driverless cars fare any better? With greater computerisation and network awareness, driverless cars may be the answer to…
International airports are a busy place to be. Nearly 200,000 passengers pass through London Heathrow Airport every day. The internal security of the country depends on effective airport checks. All departing…
Nine out of ten cancer patients die because cancer cells enter the blood circulation, spread and form tumours at distant organs. In circulation, cells can move individually or in a cluster. It is believed…