A man in a lab coat bends under a dim light, his strained eyes riveted onto a microscope. He’s powered only by caffeine and anticipation. This solitary scientist will stay on task until he unveils the truth about the cause of the dangerous disease quickly spreading through his vulnerable city. Time is short, the stakes […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
Multiple goals, multiple solutions, plenty of second-guessing and revising − here’s how science really works
Astronomy ‘Olympics’ is being hosted in Africa for the first time: 4 big talking points
Cutting-edge telescopes, gravitational waves, black holes and our solar system’s central star, the Sun, are just a few of the topics that will be on the table in Cape Town, South Africa, for an event that’s a scientific version of the Olympic Games – though the world’s leading astronomy researchers in attendance will be showcasing […] … learn more→
A US Court has ruled Google is an illegal monopoly – and the internet might never be the same
On Monday a US federal judge ruled Google has violated antitrust laws, saying the organisation is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. Google disputes the ruling. Its president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said “this decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed […] … learn more→
Students gain confidence in US democracy by participating in elections and campaigns for their homework
Title of course: Campaigns and Elections, in Theory and Practice What prompted the idea for the course? I noticed many of my students, including those interested in political science, had never actually engaged in politics beyond voting. I also saw that many of the clubs and activities that helped me make friends when I was a […] … learn more→
AIs encode language like brains do − opening a window on human conversations
Language enables people to transmit thoughts to each other because each person’s brain responds similarly to the meaning of words. In our newly published research, my colleagues and I developed a framework to model the brain activity of speakers as they engaged in face-to-face conversations. We recorded the electrical activity of two people’s brains as they engaged in unscripted […] … learn more→
Gen Z and Baby Boomers are both suffering from climate change, no need to point fingers
Studies at the global and national levels show that many young people from Generation Z (Gen Z) and Millennials are very concerned about environmental issues and climate change. Gen Z is a global population group born between 1998-2012, while Millennials were born between 1981-1995. Their level of concern about the current state of the earth is higher than that […] … learn more→
Google Gemini ad controversy: Where should we draw the line between AI and human involvement in content creation?
After widespread backlash, Google pulled its “Dear Sydney” Gemini ad from Olympics coverage. The ad featured its generative AI chatbot tool, Gemini, formerly known as Bard. The advertisement featured a father and his daughter, a fan of United States Olympic track and field athlete Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The father, despite considering himself “pretty good with words,” uses Gemini to […] … learn more→
3 factors that prevent Indonesians from becoming world-class researchers
The World Class University (WCU) status targeted by the government will be achieved, one of the ways is if there are more world-class researchers from Indonesia. In fact, as of October 2023, there were only 92 Indonesian researchers included in the Top 2 Percent World Ranking Scientist list out of a total of 210 thousand top researchers, or […] … learn more→
CAPTCHAs: The struggle to tell real humans from fake
CAPTCHAs are those now ubiquitous challenges you encounter to prove that you’re a human and not a bot when you go to log in to many websites. Websites and mobile apps have long been attacked by bots on a massive scale. Those malicious bots are programmed to automatically consume a large amount of computing resources, post spam messages, […] … learn more→
University finances are in a perilous state – it’s the result of market competition and debt-based expansion
The higher education sector in the UK is in financial crisis. Over 60 institutions have announced severance or redundancy programmes, and around 40% expect to be in deficit in 2023-24. The financial collapse of one or more universities is now a distinct possibility, with disruptive economic and social repercussions for the regions in which they are based. This alarming situation is the […] … learn more→
