We’re meeting a friend for lunch at a restaurant. When the first courses arrive, she interrupts the conversation to say, “Would you pass me the…” while looking at a specific spot on the table. We probably don’t need any more words or gestures to understand that she’s referring to salt and we pass it to […] … learn more→

Do you want to know how drones are being used in urban planning? Everyone in urban planning wants better, more precise data for smarter infrastructure and city development decisions. After all, improved mapping directly leads to: Better allocation of resources More efficient city building However… Mapping cities hasn’t changed all that much since the days […] … learn more→

Even if you don’t recall many facts from high school biology, you likely remember the cells required for making babies: egg and sperm. Maybe you can picture a swarm of sperm cells battling each other in a race to be the first to penetrate the egg. For decades, scientific literature described human conception this way, […] … learn more→

New inventions — like the printing press, magnetic compasses, steam engines, calculators and the internet — can create radical shifts in our everyday lives. Many of these new technologies were met with some degree of skepticism by those who lived through the transition. Over the past 30 years alone, we’ve seen our relationship with the internet transform […] … learn more→

The traces left by individuals on the internet and social media constitute a considerable source of digital data, known as big data. Some predicted the death of the social sciences with the emergence of this massive data set. On the contrary, it seems that the social sciences are transforming and refining their research methods thanks […] … learn more→

As a molecular biologist, talking to the public about my work with DNA has often felt like trying to translate a foreign language. This got me thinking: could these scientific ideas be presented in an artistic way, to help people engage with them? The intersection of science and art is important for a few reasons. […] … learn more→

Back in high school chemistry, I remember waiting with my bench partner for crystals to form on our stick in the cup of blue solution. Other groups around us jumped with joy when their crystals formed, but my group just waited. When the bell rang, everyone left but me. My teacher came over, picked up […] … learn more→

A painless, non-invasive brain stimulation technique can significantly improve how young adults learn maths, my colleagues and I found in a recent study. In a paper in PLOS Biology, we describe how this might be most helpful for those who are likely to struggle with mathematical learning because of how their brain areas involved in this […] … learn more→

Would you like to see your thoughts live and try to change the ones you don’t like? In general terms, that’s what neurofeedback is all about . It’s a “training technique” that allows us to observe our brain activity in real time to learn how to modulate it voluntarily, thanks to the use of electroencephalography (EEG). Let’s imagine the brain as […] … learn more→

Children and adolescents are at greatest risk in the digital environment. After all, not only is this the age group that spends the most time online, but the potential impacts of these risks are also more severe for them. On the one hand, it is important that both minors and their parents and educators, the […] … learn more→