An encouraging report by the International Game Developers Association recently found that women now make up 22% of the computer game workforce. This is a massive improvement from the previous figure of…
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The Conversation organised a public question-and-answer session on Reddit in which David Waltham, reader in mathematical geology at Royal Holloway in London, explained what makes Earth so special and what…
Earlier this year, the Russian Federal Space Agency received a hand-luggage-sized delivery from the UK. It came with a request to launch the contents aboard a rocket, along with the Russian three-tonne…
Estimates show that millions of people have been victims of cyberbullying. Sadly, this includes the famous cases where emotional distress caused Tyler Clementi, Izzy Dix, Lisa Marie Zahra, and dozens of…
Who can forget “penis-beakergate”? That wonderful moment in October 2013 when a user of popular parenting site Mumsnet started a discussion thread to ask other women whether her partner’s behaviour was…
A new study of the DNA of Tibetans has looked at the gene underlying their ability to live in the low-oxygen conditions at high altitudes. It found that this gene has come from an unexpected source – the…
With the start of the 101st Tour de France only one day away, the topic of doping in cycling will no doubt start to rear its ugly head. While the riders cover 3,664km in 21 stages over three weeks in an…
In 1972, a study showed scientific support for the so-called “Romeo and Juliet effect”: that the more parents interfere in a couple’s relationship, the more intense their romantic bond becomes and the…
Martin Evans received 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…
Two of Wimbledon’s top seeds crashed out of the tournament to players some years their junior. First, the world number one and second seed, Rafael Nadal was knocked out by new kid on the block Nick Kyrgios…
In the world of sport, we remember a winner. Not many people have heard of Pierre Rolland, who finished eighth in the 2012 Tour de France. But everyone knows Bradley Wiggins, who won it. The history of…
Alzheimer’s disease is typically a disease of later life, and age is the biggest known risk factor for the condition. But babies with Down syndrome, who always develop brains like those with Alzheimer’s…
So, Facebook has been in the dock after publishing details of a supposedly sinister experiment it oversaw several years ago. It involved monitoring the moods of around 700,000 users based on their posts…
The Tour de France is one of the most iconic and physically demanding sporting events in the world. Held annually since 1903, it has evolved from a simple test of endurance and speed to a festival of technology…
Most people reading this article will have also read their horoscope at least once. Even though scientific studies have never found evidence for the claims astrologers make, some people still think astrology…
Google’s Android now dominates 80% of the smart phone market. Of the major phone operating systems, Android is the most vulnerable to security breaches and yet perceptions haven’t caught up with reality…
Strawberries and cream are symbolic of Wimbledon and appreciated worldwide for their oh-so-sweet flavour. Researchers at the University of Florida, including myself, studied more than 30 varieties of strawberries…
Urban legends get around, but we don’t really understand why. We conducted a study to explain how misinformation spreads surprisingly fast and why people feel compelled to share it. There are many urban…
Talking up the power of big data is a real trend at the moment and Google founder Larry Page took it to new levels this week by proclaiming that 100,000 lives could be saved next year alone if we did more…
I spent a few years in South Africa searching for the elusive brown hyaena. The aim of the study was to assess the differences in the distribution and abundance of brown hyaena between protected and unprotected…
Linux, the most widely used open source operating system in the world, has scored a major publicity coup in the revelation that it is used on 94% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. Every operating…
Google has unveiled a host of new directions at its annual developers conference this week. They included a preview of the latest version of the Android operating system and plans to spread the platform…
Chemotherapy is one of the most important treatments for all types of cancer. It involves the use of drugs that kill abnormally multiplying cells. The therapy uses one or more drugs in combination and…
As smartphones have become ubiquitous, parents and teachers have voiced concerns that a technology-rich lifestyle is doing youngsters harm. Research on this question is still in its infancy, but other…
One big security issue that has arisen lately concerns control of news media. National boundaries have become blurred on the internet, and the control any nation can have over information dissemination…