The Guardian recently published an article saying “People won’t get ‘tired’ of social distancing – and it’s unscientific to suggest otherwise”. “Behavioural fatigue” the piece said, “has no basis in science”. ‘Behavioural fatigue’ became a hot topic because it was part of the UK Government’s justification for delaying the introduction of stricter public health measures. […]

Oliver Selfridge was an early pioneer of artificial intelligence, and in 1959 wrote a classic paper outlining a system by which simple units, each carrying out a specialised function, could be connected together to perform complex, cognitive tasks. This ‘pandemonium architecture‘ inspired research in neural networks, which in turn led to modern machine learning about […]

The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this. Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. Image: CC-BY Tom Stafford 2022 For me though, there is an incredibly strong depth illusion – the blue and the red appear as if they are at different […]

Solar cells may need sunlight, but they generally fare badly in the heat, operating less and less efficiently as they get hotter. Researchers led by Kasper Moth-Poulsen at the Polytechnic University of Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain have now tackled the heating that usually occurs in solar cells exposed to sunlight, by introducing a molecular solar […]

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known widely as Cern, has confirmed that it will suspend access to its state-of-the-art facilities for roughly 500 scientists affiliated with Russian institutions from 30 November 2024. Cern is an intergovernmental organisation that operates the world’s largest particle accelerator on the border of France and Switzerland. The restrictions on […]

In 2022, US president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced a mechanism for the state-backed health insurance programme Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical firms. The industry’s response was scathing, with lawsuits claiming the move was unconstitutional, and dire warnings of stifling innovation and R&D investment. With negotiations on the first batch […]

Nearly 15,000 substances are thought to belong to the family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been linked to a range of environmental and health problems. However, these compounds have become a vital, but largely unsung, part of modern life and are used in a vast array of ways. Plans are afoot in […]

This year’s chemistry Nobel prize was awarded to three scientists working in the field of protein design and structure prediction. One half of the prize was awarded to David Baker at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, while the other half was awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both from Google DeepMind, based […]

The developers of computational tools that can be used to accurately design and predict protein structures have been recognised with this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry. The Nobel committee noted that these tools have led to a revolution in biological chemistry and are today used by millions of researchers around the world. Demis Hassabis and […]

In the last episode of this series, we looked at two popular sixteenth century texts on statics, the oft published and widely read pseudo-Aristotelian Questiones Mechanicae, and Guidobaldo dal Monte’s highly influential Mechanicorum liber. Today we are going to leave Italy and travel to The Netherlands to look at the work on statics of the Flemish polymath, […]