South Africa’s energy crisis has many dimensions, from political and economic to technical and environmental. Recently, the country’s power utility, Eskom, has been generating only about 60% of its capacity and has had to restrict usage to prevent a regional blackout.
Have you ever wondered why the coffee you make at home tastes different from the drinks you buy in cafes? Or why coffee from the same place can taste different throughout the week? You may be quick to blame the barista for changing the recipe, but our recent study, published in Matter, suggests that this variation is down to an inherent inconsistency of common brewing methods. Luckily, we believe to have discovered a path to making a great espresso – to your taste – every time. The quality of a cup of coffee depends on the coffee’s variety and origin, its…
Fear of missing out, or FoMO, is commonly described as that anxious feeling you get when you think other people might be having a good time without you. Excessive FoMO is closely related to symptoms of behavioural addiction. It often leads to undesirable behaviour such as the constant checking of social media, even in an inappropriate context, like while driving, and becoming overly preoccupied with reactions to online posts and messages.
Many young people spend significantly more time using screens than is recommended by health professionals. Excessive screen time has been blamed for several ills, including obesity and poor mental health. To mitigate these negative effects, we need to understand the things that encourage children to spend lots of time in front of a screen.
Workplace surveillance sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but we are having to get used to it. In a sign of the times, the European Court of Human Rights has just ruled that a supermarket in Barcelona was entitled to fire employees after catching them stealing on CCTV cameras that they didn’t know were installed. This overturned a decision by the court’s lower chamber that the cameras had breached the employees’ human rights.
The digital economy has been getting a lot of attention, with increasingly strong headlines offering apocalyptic as well as breathtakingly exciting scenarios. Some warn of job losses due to automation, some wonder at the things digital technology can do. And then there’s real scepticism about whether this will translate into delivering to people who need it most.
Humans are more connected to each other than ever, thanks to smartphones, the web and social media. At the same time, loneliness is a huge and growing social problem.
Globally, 750 million youth and adults do not know how to read and write and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. Literacy is central to education and plays an important role in development and peace.
Iran and other nations have waged a stealth cyberwar against the United States for at least the past decade, largely targeting not the government itself but, rather, critical infrastructure companies. This threat to the private sector will get much worse before it gets better and businesses need to be prepared to deal with it.
If you’re like most workers, you don’t spend 100% of your time at the office doing what you’re supposed to be doing. In fact, on average, U.S. workers spend about 10% of their work day surfing the internet, emailing friends or shopping online. This so-called cyberloafing costs employers up to US$85 billion a year.
