Reading is experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z and millennials, many of whom are actively seeking alternatives to “doomscrolling” and the mental fatigue associated with constant social media use. In North America, an estimated 57 to 61 per cent of Gen Z and millennials identify as readers, averaging 3.5 to 4.5 books per year, with a preference for physical […] … learn more→

Sexual misconduct – including sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and sexual assault – is a common problem on U.S. college campuses. According to the 2024 Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness Survey, about 1 in 5 women and transgender or nonbinary undergraduates experienced sexual assault during college. The survey included 180,323 undergraduate, graduate and professional students across […] … learn more→

At some point in the next several months, I am hoping to receive a modest check as a member of the class covered in the class-action settlement Bartz v. Anthropic. In 2025, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, best known for creating the chatbot Claude, agreed to pay up to US$1.5 billion to thousands of authors after a judge ruled that […] … learn more→

The explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has provoked both hopes and anxieties about the potential benefits and harms of this technology. In advanced economies, people are almost equally worried and optimistic about it. This is perhaps unsurprising. AI consumes vast amounts of natural resources yet promises to save the planet. It may improve human efficiency and productivity, […] … learn more→

When you ask ChatGPT, Claude, or any other “Chat” a question on any subject, it responds as if it were an omniscient interlocutor. Yet, this language is produced statistically, by integrating the multiplicity of contexts—which allows it to respond appropriately and differently each time, depending on the context of the utterance—by aggregating immense amounts of […] … learn more→

How can we teach the Holocaust and transmit to younger generations the desire to act against forgetting? With literature and work on corpora of testimonies, the historical investigation on the traces of missing persons invites students to combine knowledge and experience, allowing them to forge another link with history, according to the principle of the […] … learn more→

As school holidays continue around Australia, many parents are looking for educational ways to keep their children entertained. If you own an Android device and have young children, you may find yourself browsing Google Play for educational and age-appropriate apps. If you go to the children’s section, you will be led to a page with “Teacher […] … learn more→

In my last post, ‘Transferring your funding’, I talked in general about the things to consider for your grants when you move universities. This post covers the questions that I ask when someone says “I’m coming to your university and I need to transfer my grant”. As I said last time, it is worth remembering […] … learn more→

As a researcher investigating how electric brain stimulation can improve people’s powers of recollection, I’m often asked how memory works – and what we can do to use it more effectively. Happily, decades of research have given us some clear answers to both questions. Memory essentially operates in three stages, with different brain regions contributing to each […] … learn more→

Concision is not the same as brevity. A short piece of writing can be wasteful with its words, and a long piece can be meaning-full right to the last sentence. Getting concise is about getting clear about meanings, not addressing the total word count. When you cut a sentence that does no work, or replace […] … learn more→