Author: The Conversation

This year, Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to launch the first private space mission into orbit with no professional astronauts. Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who chartered the trip and will command the mission, will spend two to four days orbiting Earth in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, alongside three other people. While Crew Dragon’s short mission is unlikely to have much of an effect on the health of the passengers, these capsules will soon be going on much longer trips, which could have a large effect on a person’s health. Space missions decrease astronauts’ bone density by 1%-1.5% per month and weaken movement and postural muscles. Even…

Imagine you are in a job interview. As you answer the recruiter’s questions, an artificial intelligence (AI) system scans your face, scoring you for nervousness, empathy and dependability. It may sound like science fiction, but these systems are increasingly used, often without people’s knowledge or consent. Emotion recognition technology (ERT) is in fact a burgeoning multi-billion-dollar industry that aims to use AI to detect emotions from facial expressions. Yet the science behind emotion recognition systems is controversial: there are biases built into the systems. Many companies use ERT to test customer reactions to their products, from cereal to video games. But it can also be used in situations with much higher stakes, such…

Memories are often considered very personal and private. Yet, in the past few years, people have got used to notifications from social media or phone galleries telling them they have a “memory”. These repackaged versions of the past affect not just what we remember but also the attachments we have with those memories. In a new study, we found social media has the potential to change how people feel about their memories. Social media metrics such as Facebook “likes” can negatively impact how people feel about certain memories, especially if these memories are shared without getting many likes. Beyond this, the…

Gradually over the past few years, the once-ubiquitous discussions about millennials are being replaced by an interest in the new kids on the block: generation Z – or, to give them a recently assigned alias – “Zoomers”. According to most reckonings, to be genZ means you were born some time between 1997 and 2012 (although this varies depending on who you listen to – some estimates say the youngest Zoomers were born as late as 2015). GenZ is defined by the influential Pew Foundation as being: More racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, and they are on track to be the most…

Some weeks ago, a nine-year-old macaque monkey called Pager successfully played a game of Pong with its mind. While it may sound like science fiction, the demonstration by Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink is an example of a brain-machine interface in action (and has been done before). A coin-sized disc called a “Link” was implanted by a precision surgical robot into Pager’s brain, connecting thousands of micro threads from the chip to neurons responsible for controlling motion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ&feature=emb_logo Brain-machine interfaces could bring tremendous benefit to humanity. But to enjoy the benefits, we’ll need to manage the risks down to an acceptable level. A perplexing game…

If you’ve ever gotten your phone wet in the rain, dropped it in water or spilt liquid over it, you’re not alone. One study suggests 25% of smartphone users have damaged their smartphone with water or some other kind of liquid. Liquid penetrating a smartphone can affect the device in several ways. It could lead to: blurry photos, if moisture gets trapped in the camera lens ruffled audio, or no audio liquid droplets under the screen an inability to charge the rusting of internal parts, or a total end to all functionality. While new phones are advertised as “water resistant”, this doesn’t…

At the height of his career, the pioneering electrical engineer Nikola Tesla became obsessed with an idea. He theorised that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly through the air at long distances – either via a series of strategically positioned towers, or hopping across a system of suspended balloons. Things didn’t go to plan, and Tesla’s ambitions for a wireless global electricity supply were never realised. But the theory itself wasn’t disproved: it would have simply required an extraordinary amount of power, much of which would have been wasted. Now, a research paper has suggested that the architects of the 5G network may have…

Transitioning to home working had its challenges for us all, but when your job involves researching biological applications for nanotechnology, those trials are a little more complicated than juggling the household’s broadband usage. So barred from his lab, you might reasonably expect the research by organic chemist Vittorio Saggiomo, from the Bionanotechnology group at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, to have come to a grinding halt. But Saggiomo is a creative, imaginative type, and so he began to wonder if he could turn common household appliances to good use in the fight against COVID-19. More specifically, could he create a cheap,…

The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January exposed the power of social media to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend more time on social media than all other age groups, have known this for years. “On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn into something so big so fast,” said Justin, a 17-year-old living in Hartford, Connecticut, during one of my research focus groups. (The participants’ names have been changed in this article to protect their identities.) For the last three years, I have studied how and why social media triggers and accelerates offline violence. In my research,…

My colleagues and I changed a digital version of Monopoly so that instead of getting US$200 each time a player passes Go, the player is charged a wealth tax. We didn’t do this to gain an advantage or trick anyone. The purpose is to throw a curveball at artificial intelligence agents that play the game. Our aim is to help the agents learn to handle unexpected events, something AIs to date have been decidedly bad at. Giving AIs this kind of adaptability is important for futuristic systems like surgical robots, but also algorithms in the here and now that decide who should get bail,…