At his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump affirmed his desire to recreate a “new American Gilded Age.” A few days later, he made this unexpected reference to the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, known as the Gilded Age : “The United States was at its richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were […] … learn more→
Monthly Archives: April 2025

Recreating a Second Gilded Age: Trump’s Illusions

An ethical look at new digital assistance tools in medicine
Like chatbots, new digital healthcare tools are changing patient care. Their promoters tout the assistance they provide to doctors, who can focus more on the consultation process. To ensure ethical use, humans must remain the central agent in the practice of digital medicine. Digital health tools have gradually become a part of our daily lives. […] … learn more→

Beyond the stroke: robotics reveals new secrets of writing
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Aristotle. Understanding a phenomenon requires multiple perspectives. The more sources of information we consider, the more precise our interpretation will be and the greater our ability to detect hidden patterns and relationships. This is precisely what happens in electronic handwriting analysis applied to fields such as […] … learn more→

What body language contributes and how to teach it in school
When humans begin our life journey as infants, our only form of communication is through body language, which includes expressive movement and gestures, as well as the sounds that accompany these gestures. When we acquire other languages, expressive movement becomes unintentional, so speech can be clear without its support. Although this bodily expression is innate […] … learn more→

Inventing new words
Even though it seems highly rule-bound, the English language changes all the time. Every year new words are added to the dictionary. These days a lot of new words come from popular culture and new technologies. And they spread online. New words are made by changing existing words, adding to them, abbreviating them or they are spoken […] … learn more→

Exams coming up? Use the science of memory to improve how you revise
“I did revise… it just didn’t go in!” Sound familiar? What about “I turned over the exam paper and my mind just went blank…” It’s worrying to feel like everything you’re doing to prepare for an exam somehow isn’t working. But you can harness the science behind how memory works to make your revision more […] … learn more→

Indicators of alien life may have been found – astrophysicist explains what the new research means
What do you think of when it comes to extra terrestrial life? Most popular sci-fi books and TV shows suggest humanoid beings could live on other planets. But when astronomers are searching for extra-terrestrial life, it is usually in the form of emissions from bacteria or other tiny organisms. A new research paper in the […] … learn more→

Boat Race row is just the latest example of a century of academic dispute over teacher education
When the men’s and women’s boats took to the water for the 2025 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, a few students who would have hoped to be part of the crews were missing. Matt Heywood, Molly Foxell and Kate Crowley, all of Cambridge, did not take part after a complaint from Oxford University Boat Club over their eligibility was […] … learn more→

Who controls digital discourse in the era of Big Tech?
In the 21st century, information circulates at unimaginable speeds, and with it, the power to influence public opinion has become concentrated in the hands of a few. Big tech companies and their billionaire owners have assumed the role of puppeteers on the digital stage, orchestrating the global narrative and often deciding who has a voice […] … learn more→

Responsible information management should be a basic learning experience at the university.
Although some have spoken of the “end” of the teaching profession with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, what this technology has actually meant is the definitive endorsement of a transformation in the role of the teacher, especially at the university level. And one of its most important functions is to facilitate critical thinking . Today’s university professor must […] … learn more→