Pen maker Bic has been asking people around to world to submit their handwriting so it can produce what it is calling the Universal Typeface. Although the experiment is not claiming to have any scientific…
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Displaying 5076 - 5100 of 5718 articles
In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables that ran through the English Channel…
Many people think a snake’s forked tongue is creepy. Every so often, the snake waves it around rapidly, then retracts it. Theories explaining the forked tongues of snakes have been around for thousands…
You donate gigabytes of valuable data to Google every day. Your browsing history, search results, and gmail behaviour as well as the countless smartphone apps which monitor your movements and personal…
The number of physical robberies on banks has fallen dramatically in recent years, but the amount of money banks are losing through electronic methods has rocketed. In 2013 for example, the annual fraud…
Rick Astley, 80s pop singer and unlikely king of internet memes, is dead. Or at least the most persistent song in his catalogue is. Or at least its most popular unofficial YouTube upload is. Or at least…
In order to improve something, we need to be able to measure its quality. This is true in public policy, in commercial industries, and also in science. Like other fields, science has a growing need for…
With the announcement of an inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, talk of poisons is back in the news. There are many articles with lists of the most poisonous substances, which are often gathered…
Nations of the world came together in 2000 to make a solemn commitment to humanity to combat tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS and other devastating diseases. This pushed governments to set up aggressive public…
The UK is one of the most CCTV-saturated countries in the world. Being watched and monitored is an everyday reality on British streets, allegedly increasing from one camera for every 14 people in 2008…
Have the UK police successfully broken anonymity on the internet? They certainly seemed to imply as much when the National Crime Agency proudly announced last week that it had made 660 arrests after an…
Animals have evolved to occupy almost all corners of the Earth. To survive, no matter the weather outside, they all need temperature-sensitive bodily reactions to work. This is easy for warm-blooded animals…
Children’s entertainment is in a mess. This is in no small part due to recent revelations about just what was happening when the stars of earlier generations were producing content. The high-profile cases…
The world’s leading humanoid robot, ASIMO, has recently learnt sign language. The news of this breakthrough came just as I completed Level 1 of British Sign Language (I dare say it took me longer to master…
More than two-thirds of chicken produced in the UK is contaminated with disease-causing bacteria, an investigation by The Guardian has revealed. Although the bug can be killed by proper cooking, it is…
“Blind as a bat” goes the saying – but that’s a myth. Small bats have perfectly good eyesight for their size, but they can also call upon “extra senses” which humans can only achieve with technology. These…
Oliver Smithies won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 “for discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells”. Mohit Kumar…
The news that the black boxes from Malaysia Airlines flight M17 has been handed over to Malaysian authorities, will lead to many questions about what information they have to offer. The two recorders have…
Every five years, the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) reviews its research institutes from Astronomy to Zoology. But this year, for the first time, the FCT contracted the European Science…
The United Arab Emirates has announced plans to launch a mission to Mars by 2021. A first for the Arab world, the mission and accompanying Space Agency are a big deal for the UAE – scientifically and politically…
An elephant that supposedly cried tears when it was being rescued from an abusive home where it had been captive for 50 years created much excitment on social media. The experience of being cut loose from…
The final dash to the line in a Tour de France sprint finish may appear to the bystander to be a mess of bodies trying to cram into the width of a road, but there is a high degree of strategy involved…
Having been a child of the home computer boom of the early 1980s and then worked with computers for many years, I can’t help but sigh every time a new campaign to reduce piracy comes into effect. It’s…
Engineers at Fukushima nuclear power plant have been trying to create a £185m ice wall to isolate contaminated water from mixing with groundwater. However, there has been a steady stream of news articles…
The 21st century has seen rapid urbanisation and the global population is now expected to grow to more than 8.3 billion by 2050. Currently, 800m hectares – 38% of the earth’s land surface – is farmed and…