Author: The Conversation

New details of our past are coming to light, hiding in the nooks and crannies of the world, as we refine our techniques to go looking for them. Most lauded is the reconstruction of the evolution of humanity since our African origins around 300,000 years ago, by analysing our living and fossil DNA. Replete with the ghosts of African and Eurasian populations of the deep past, these have been resurrected only through the ability of science to reach into the world of the minuscule by studying biomolecules. Now, digital analysis of rock surfaces reveals how other ghosts of the deep…

Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk of the public square fuelled by Elon Musk’s recent proposed takeover of Twitter. Many have balked at the idea that a billionaire would entirely control another one of the world’s important social networks, one that has been adopted by academics and politicians as a choice venue for public debates. But what is the public square, and what can we do to save it? Squares and spheres The concept of the public square is one that has a rich history in communications and technology studies. Historically, the public square was a central location where…

Infectious diseases such as malaria remain a leading cause of death in many regions. This is partly because people there don’t have access to medical diagnostic tools that can detect these diseases (along with a range of non-infectious diseases) at an early stage, when there is more scope for treatment. It’s a challenge scientists have risen to, with a goal to democratise health care for economically disadvantaged people the world over. My colleagues and I have developed a new method for the investigation of biological cells which is small enough to fit into a smartphone lens. While we have so far only…

When a star explodes and dies in a supernova, it takes on a new life of sorts. Pulsars are the extremely rapidly rotating objects left over after massive stars have exhausted their fuel supply. They are extremely dense, with a mass similar to the Sun crammed into a region the size of Sydney. Pulsars emit beams of radio waves from their poles. As those beams sweep across Earth, we can detect rapid pulses as often as hundreds of times per second. With this knowledge, scientists are always on the lookout for new pulsars within and outside our Milky Way galaxy.…

When new innovations emerge, there’s always a temptation to say that we need to rewrite the rulebook for them. Gamification has been no exception. Gamification refers to the use of elements from gaming, often by a smartphone app, to make ordinary activities like stock trading or rideshares more engaging. It can have powerful influences on our choices, sometimes in controversial ways. For instance, users of gamified trading apps like Robinhood have suffered huge losses, often from trading too frequently and making outsized bets on meme stocks or other assets that were too risky for them. By designing their interfaces to make stock trading…

Today more than half of the world’s population is connected to the internet. In Africa, there are over 590 million internet users and over 800 million mobile phone subscribers. Some observers note that such diffusion of digital tools and connectivity is bringing political, economic, social and cultural transformations on the African continent. One such change is that workers from Lagos to Johannesburg to Nairobi are carrying out various forms of digital work. These are activities which involve manipulation of digital data using tools such as mobile phones, computers and the internet. Examples are transcription, article writing, image tagging, search engine optimisation, and inbound and outbound customer services, which can be done for…

Elon Musk is the planet’s number one billionaire. If anyone can turn cyberspace into a heaven – or hell – of free speech “absolutism” via a US$44 billion (£35 billion) Twitter takeover, then surely he’s the man. Right? When free-market elephants like Musk or Jeff Bezos (who bought the Washington Post in 2013) take charge of major mass-media outlets, concerns are raised about the direction of free speech, which remains the essential ingredient of democratic participation. This feeds into wider concerns around the ever-increasing privatisation of public spaces. In the online age, the fact that we spend so much of our time in…

If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same. For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. Most scientists are confident that life exists on many of the 300 million potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers also think there is a decent…

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bitter reminder that there is no end to the horrific suffering that humans are sometimes willing to inflict on others. Over the past several years, a seemingly endless stream of painful stories and images coming out of Syria, Yemen and now Ukraine – as well as mass shootings in the U.S. – have become a regular part of our daily life. With each passing day of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the gruesome news that it brings, many of us find ourselves checking the news the minute we wake up and last thing before…

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seems set to purchase the social media platform Twitter for around US$44 billion. He says he’s not doing it to make money (which is good, because Twitter has rarely turned a profit), but rather because, among other things, he believes in free speech. Twitter might seem an odd place to make a stand for free speech. The service has around 217 million daily users, only a fraction of the 2.8 billion who log in each day to one of the Meta family (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). But the platform plays a disproportionately large role in society. It is…