Whether it’s adverts for the Amazon Alexa, Sophia the robot tweeting or ‘Black Mirror’ throwing its viewers into a hellscape where personal security robots routinely hunt and kill humans, our society has Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the brain. With its applications seemingly endless, an AI takeover does seem inevitable. However, it has some drawbacks that […]
Future
Every breath you take
As we all well know, air pollution is the result of the release of various harmful gases that negatively impact the environment, like Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Particulate Matter (PM) and other pollutants. In 2014, Europe had an estimated 500,000 premature deaths due to abysmal air quality, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA) […]
When Stars Collide
This story really has it all. Really it does; astronomy, physics, chemistry, two dying stars spiralling into one another (resulting in a cataclysmic explosion) and a whole lot of gold, the earth’s mass in gold to be precise! It all started in a galaxy not too far away – about 130 million light years away […]
Artificial Neurons and the Robot Takeover
In recent totally terrifying and not-Black-Mirror-related news, it has been found that artificial neurons, or in much more cooler terminology “superconducting computing chips” modelled after neurons have been found to be able to process information much faster and more efficiently than the human brain. So what does this mean for us and the software that […]
How Vampyr Brings its World to Life With Consequences
Murder is often a minor offence; an inconsequential event in the wider context of the world – or at least, that usually seems to be the case in video games. Whether your victim is a mythical beast, a common bandit or a humble priest, they probably deserved it, right? Most of the time, your character […]
The EB and Flow of Skin Condition Treatment.
Skin as delicate as a butterfly’s wing – this is how patients with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) are often described. The condition causes skin to blister and tear painfully in response to the lightest touch – even the touch of light clothing can be enough. EB is a genetic condition that occurs due to an absence […]
Google’s PHQ-9 Tests – combating increasing rates of mental health problems
As part of an initiative which sees the tech giant partnered with the USA’s National Alliance on Mental Illness, Google mobile searches for the terms “depression” and “clinical depression” will now present US users with the option to take a short, self-administered depression test. According to the Alliance, whilst one in five Americans are likely […]
Solutions to Ageing
Flashback to many years ago; you may or may not believe that smallpox killed approximately 300 million people in the 20th century alone. That would account for roughly 19% of the population at that time. Thanks to Edward Jenner’s vaccine breakthrough, today, the smallpox can be cured before it is even contracted. It is rarely, […]
BEST OF TED: Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive.
Stephen Petranek’s TED talk ‘Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive’ details how humankind will one day become a spacefaring species. Petranek is a writer and technologist who focuses on how emerging technologies could benefit our future lives. Petranek’s talk can be found on ted.com under the ‘science’ section. Journalist Stephen Petranek […]
Best of TED: Gene editing and the eradication of malaria
Jennifer Kahn is a science journalist whose articles cover the gene-editing abilities of CRISPR technology. Her TED talk, ‘Gene editing can now change an entire species – forever’ can be found on TED.com under the ‘Science’ section. No one can deny the blight malaria has been on the world. UNICEF figures show over a […]