Author: The Conversation

In 2019, former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston said he was worried we were “stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare dystopia.” He had been researching how government agencies around the world were turning to automated decision-making systems (ADS) to cut costs, increase efficiency and target resources. ADS are technical systems designed to help or replace human decision-making using algorithms. Alston was worried for good reason. Research shows that ADS can be used in ways that discriminate, exacerbate inequality, infringe upon rights, sort people into different social groups, wrongly limit access to services and intensify surveillance. For example, families have been bankrupted and forced into crises after being falsely accused of benefit…

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system – they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars. One planet is 30% larger than Earth and orbits its star in less than three days. The other is 70% larger than the Earth and might host a deep ocean. These two exoplanets are super-Earths – more massive than the Earth but smaller than ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. I’m a professor of astronomy who studies galactic cores, distant galaxies, astrobiology and exoplanets. I closely follow the search for planets that…

Since 2018, NASA’s InSight mission to Mars has recorded seismic waves from more than 1,300 marsquakes in its quest to probe the internal structure of the red planet. The solar panels of the car-sized robotic lander have become caked with Martian dust, and NASA scientists expect it will completely power down by the end of 2022. But the internal rumblings of our planetary neighbour aren’t the only things that InSight’s seismometers detect: they also pick up the thuds of space rocks crashing into the Martian soil. In new research published in Nature Geoscience, we used data from InSight to detect and locate four high-speed meteoroid collisions, and…

Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft is designed to be a one hit wonder. It will end its days by crashing into an asteroid at 24,000 kilometres per hour on September 26. Launched from Earth in November 2021, Dart is about the size of a bus and was created to test and prove our ability to defend the Earth from a dangerous asteroid. Landing a direct hit on a target from 11 million kilometres away isn’t easy. But while this sounds far, the asteroid was actually selected by Nasa because it is relatively close to Earth. This will give engineers the…

Imagine the following scenario. A phone rings. An office worker answers it and hears his boss, in a panic, tell him that she forgot to transfer money to the new contractor before she left for the day and needs him to do it. She gives him the wire transfer information, and with the money transferred, the crisis has been averted. The worker sits back in his chair, takes a deep breath, and watches as his boss walks in the door. The voice on the other end of the call was not his boss. In fact, it wasn’t even a human.…

Electric planes might seem futuristic, but they aren’t that far off, at least for short hops. Two-seater Velis Electros are already quietly buzzing around Europe, electric sea planes are being tested in British Columbia, and larger planes are coming. Air Canada announced on Sept. 15, 2022, that it would buy 30 electric-hybrid regional aircraft from Sweden’s Heart Aerospace, which expects to have its 30-seat plane in service by 2028. Analysts at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab note that the first hybrid electric 50- to 70-seat commuter plane could be ready not long after that. In the 2030s, they say, electric aviation could really take off. That matters for…

We all know the routine by heart: “Please ensure your seats are in the upright position, tray tables stowed, window shades are up, laptops are stored in the overhead bins and electronic devices are set to flight mode”. Now, the first four are reasonable, right? Window shades need to be up so we can see if there’s an emergency, such as fire. Tray tables need to be stowed and seats upright so we can get out of the row quickly. Laptops can become projectiles in an emergency, as the seat back pockets are not strong enough to contain them. And…

Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage. My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact. Modern aeroplanes burn kerosene…

Stem cells are the starting point for all other cells in our bodies. The first such cells to be found were blood stem cells – as the name suggests, they give rise to different types of blood cells. But there’s much we don’t know about how these cells develop in the first place. In a study published today in Cell Reports, we have shown how a lab simulation of an embryo’s beating heart and circulation lead to the development of human blood stem cell precursors. The tiny device mimics embryonic blood flow, allowing us to directly observe human embryonic blood formation under the…

The English Premier League (EPL) celebrates its 30th season this year, and much has changed since the league’s inception in 1992. For many long-time fans, the period may well be defined by the influx of money into the sport, with player wages ballooning, transfer records toppling, and broadcasting deals reaching into the billions of pounds. Some of this wealth has been used to impose major technological enhancements on the league, including the video assistant referee (VAR), goalline technology, and vanishing spray applied to the playing surface by the referee to indicate where set plays should be taken from. Meanwhile, increasingly advanced player tracking systems have given commentators and pundits access to team performance…