Next year, high-speed rail travel will celebrate its 50th birthday. In 1964, Japan put into service the first Shinkansen line, from Tokyo to Osaka. Its trains initially operated at speeds of up to 210…
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Displaying 5501 - 5525 of 5718 articles
At low temperatures the human body has a hard time. As the cold sets in, blood vessels constrict to maintain heat and some body parts – like fingers and toes – begin to suffer. Metabolism ramps up to fight…
Quantum mechanics has been hailed as the next big thing in technology. And quantum computers are a media favourite. But there is a little-known quantum technology that can peer beneath the earth, which…
Would physics be “far more interesting” if the Higgs boson had not been found? Stephen Hawking thinks so. He made this bold claim, possibly with his tongue slightly in his cheek, at the opening of a new…
Dogs have a special connection with humans, more so than any other animal. But until recently little was known about how we formed this bond. Charles Darwin once speculated: “I do not believe … that all…
We all know the story: Once upon a time there was a young girl who took a walk through the woods to visit her grandmother, carrying a basket of goodies. When she arrived she found her granny ill in bed…
Pachycephalosaurus is famous for its appearance in the movie Jurassic Park: The Lost World, where one is shown battering a man and his car. To achieve the feat the dinosaur used its greatly-thickened skull…
Zoos are great places to study animals. The non-human primates among them get the most attention from researchers. Some of them are trained to interact with computers for psychological research. In a new…
Seed dispersal by animals is important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land. Usually bugs, birds, or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list. A new study reviewed…
Tesco, a British grocer with global status, has this week teamed up with Alan Sugar’s Amscreen to take personalised advertising to the next level. By means of Amscreen’s proprietary facial recognition…
In his recent article on The Conversation, Andrew Knight argues that “the overwhelming majority of invasive animal experiments do not pass the cost-benefit test required by regulations and expected by…
A food-borne illness is spreading quickly through the United States, an investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed. The disease, called cyclosporiasis, is common…
The hairworm is a long, thread-like parasite that sits bundled up inside the body of its host. It grows so large that it takes up most of the room inside the host’s body, waiting for the right moment to…
To most people pest management brings up images of rats, cockroaches and chemical spraying. Poisoning vermin and insect is only one minor, albeit important, aspect of pest management. Few people know about…
There are not many professions where people routinely ask you to justify your work, but theoretical physics is one of them. In the wake of the recent Nobel Prize to Peter Higgs and François Englert for…
Talent is unfair. One can quibble about what it actually is. But there is little doubt that it is something that emerges not just from the genes but also from their interaction with the environment. Different…
A US team with a highly sensitive dark matter detector has just finished its first run. It has found nothing, and that is still big news. Physicists can explain accurately the behaviour of what makes matter…
Recent cases involving the use of computer generated images as evidence in courtrooms have shown the powerful impact they can have on jury decision making. But studies show that jurors can be unduly influenced…
Zombies are undergoing a revival. Our screens have been filled with films such as “Zombieland”, “World War Z” and “Resident Evil”. Many home-made zombie will be knocking at our doors this week for Halloween…
Nature yields hidden fruits – beautiful patterns and basic relations that make our world. These and the adventure of the human mind in discovering them seem to me a great unharvested source of wonder for…
How can you turn lukewarm lager to ice-cold beer in under a minute? A startup has developed a nifty gizmo which does just that, saving both energy and embarrassment at parties. Manufacturer Enviro-Cool…
Within the European Union there is an East-West gap, in health and innovation. The gap is widening because eastern European member states (such as Poland, Romania, Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia) are winning…
Is it possible to socially interact with another person in the absence of a body and the senses? Social networking allows us to present versions of ourselves. But when we use a computer to mediate our…
There was no concept of biological species before the late 17th century in natural history. So why did we get a concept of species in the first place? What is “species” needed for? The answer is that the…
Hummingbird-pollinated flowers evolved perfectly to suit the bird’s bill shape, its colour vision and even its taste buds. This is the beauty of co-evolution, where two species interact so closely that…