If you need to hit a nail, what tool do you ask for? If you say “hammer,” do you pronounce the “r”? Do you drop the “h”? Different people pronounce the same English words in different ways. People learn which words to use and how to pronounce them as they’re learning to talk with family, […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
English dialects make themselves heard in genes
Positive discrimination at Harvard: the end of a contested conception of justice?
In 2014, an NGO attacked the universities of North Carolina and Harvard , accusing them of discriminating against Asian students in favor of white students through “affirmative action” practices supposed to promote ethno-racial diversity. After several years of proceedings, the Supreme Court of the United States must finally render its decision in June 2023. This decision will be […] … learn more→
The digital future may rely on ultrafast optical electronics and computers
If you’ve ever wished you had a faster phone, computer or internet connection, you’ve encountered the personal experience of hitting a limit of technology. But there might be help on the way. Over the past several decades, scientists and engineers like me have worked to develop faster transistors, the electronic components underlying modern electronic and digital communications […] … learn more→
A video game to rethink gender stereotypes
The society in which we live is still in need of achieving greater equality and integration. Cases of gender violence still open the news almost every day. We still verify that there is a gender gap in certain jobs or, even, we find out that drugs are not usually tested on women , among other issues. However, these situations are much worse in […] … learn more→
ChatGPT will not put mathematicians out of work, but will create new opportunities
The British mathematician Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing, asked himself in 1950 the question: can machines think? Right away he also wondered: can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do? We now ask ourselves: is ChatGPT the answer to Turing? At the moment, many mathematicians have already detected that, in our discipline, the chatbot “fails more […] … learn more→
Vocational education: between schools and companies, a complex story
What part should the company take in the vocational training of young people? The question is not new, nor are the demands for a match between the courses offered and the needs of companies. There are many relationships between schools and companies. Putting it into perspective makes it possible to identify the great diversity of experiences over […] … learn more→
Should we pay our children?
The number of parents giving money on demand in lieu of pay has been on the rise of late. Is this a good option? The key is not so much in giving or not giving pay, but in how it is given. Learn money management Giving our children some money each week is an excellent opportunity for them to […] … learn more→
6 ways universities can promote health on campus — and measure progress
The importance of protecting our society’s health and well-being became starkly apparent during the pandemic. People’s physical and mental health were severely impacted by the sudden changes forced by the emergent global crisis. Although nations reacted quickly at the onset, coming back from the pandemic has been difficult. Overlapping crises including the renewed urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement […] … learn more→
Taking students to the range to learn about gun culture firsthand
Title of course: “Sociology of Guns” What prompted the idea for the course? I grew up in the liberal culture of the San Francisco Bay Area and never touched a firearm until I was 42 years old, living in North Carolina and teaching sociology at Wake Forest University. For the past 10-plus years I have been […] … learn more→
“The other side of words”: Agnotology
Western sciences have little grasped the issue of ignorance despite the fact that, in the words of Karl Popper , “our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance is necessarily infinite”, with important consequences for our lives. . This is observed by Robert N. Proctor in the introduction to a collective work on agnotology published in 2008. This […] … learn more→
