Author: The Conversation

Health products, like detox teas and mood-boosting waters, rely on a lack of neuroscientific knowledge to make their claims. Some of these claims are unsubstantiated, while others are completely made up. My doctoral research investigates visual processing, but when I look at the big picture, I realize that what I’m really studying are fundamental aspects of brain anatomy, connectivity and communication. One specific function of the visual system that I have studied during my degree is the blue-light detecting molecule, melanopsin. In humans, melanopsin is seemingly restricted to a group of neurons in the eye, which preferentially target a structure in the…

As a global pandemic continues to determine a new normal, tens of thousands of viewers have been tuning in to watch people play chess on a livestreaming website called Twitch.tv. An American chess grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, along with a number of celebrities of the video game world, is leading a renaissance in the ancient game. While viewers eagerly await Nakamura’s streams to begin, they are treated to a slideshow of memes involving Nakamura’s face superimposed into scenes from pop culture. First a reference to a well-known Japanese animation, next a famous upside-down kiss with Spiderman and finally, Nakamura’s characteristic grin is…

Drones have changed how we see the world. Even more profoundly, drones have transformed how we witness the world: how we decide the events that matter and create our shared “truth” of what happened. Remotely piloted and equipped with sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles are changing the way we witness war, climate change, political protest, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, drone footage has broadcast the unrest in the US city of Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake and the devastation of the Beirut chemical explosion and Tropical Storm Laura. Drone technology can blur viewpoints, pull focus onto surveillance and allow people to…

Cybersecurity is like a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as the good guys put a stop to one type of attack, another pops up. Usernames and passwords were once good enough to keep an account secure. But before long, cybercriminals figured out how to get around this. Often they’ll use “brute force attacks”, bombarding a user’s account with various password and login combinations in a bid to guess the correct one. To deal with such attacks, a second layer of security was added in an approach known as two-factor authentication, or 2FA. It’s widespread now, but does 2FA also leave…

The demand for cheaper, greener electricity means that the energy landscape is changing faster than at any other point in history. This is particularly true of solar-powered electricity and battery storage. The cost of both has dropped at unprecedented rates over the past decade and energy efficient technologies such as LED lighting have also expanded. Access to cheap and ubiquitous solar power and storage will transform the way we produce and use power, allowing electrification of the transport sector. There is potential for new chemical-based economies in which we store renewable energy as fuels, and support new devices making up an “internet of things”. But our…

Skin is our largest organ, made up of complex sensors constantly monitoring for anything that might cause us pain. Our new technology replicates that – electronically. The electronic artificial skin we’ve developed reacts to pain stimuli just like real skin, and paves the way for better prosthetics, smarter robotics and non-invasive alternatives to skin grafts. Our prototype device mimics the body’s near-instant feedback response and can react to painful sensations with the same lighting speed at which nerve signals travel to the brain. Our new technology, details of which are published in Advanced Intelligent Systems, is made of silicone rubber with…

The Trump administration’s recently announced bans on Chinese-owned social media platforms TikTok and WeChat could have unintended consequences. The orders bar the apps from doing business in the U.S. or with U.S. persons or businesses after Sept. 20 and require divestiture of TikTok by Nov. 12. The executive orders are based on national security grounds, though the threats cited are to citizens rather than the government. Foreign policy analysts see the move as part of the administration’s ongoing wrestling match with the Chinese government for leverage in the global economy. Whatever the motivation, as someone who researches both cybersecurity and technology policy, I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs. The bans threaten Americans’…

“Hello,” says trumpeter Sydney Mavundla. “Greetings to you, sitting in your living room there on that red couch!” But Mavundla can’t see his audience. He’s talking through the “fourth wall” – the screen of a digital device – as he live streams a concert by his group from an empty studio out to the online world. As COVID-19 lockdown clamped down in early 2020, musicians everywhere began turning to live streaming as a potential alternative source of connection with audiences and earnings. But how realistic were those hopes? For South Africa, that’s what Digital Futures? – a just-published snapshot study of live streaming platforms –…

Detroit police wrongfully arrested Robert Julian-Borchak Williams in January 2020 for a shoplifting incident that had taken place two years earlier. Even though Williams had nothing to do with the incident, facial recognition technology used by Michigan State Police “matched” his face with a grainy image obtained from an in-store surveillance video showing another African American man taking US$3,800 worth of watches. Two weeks later, the case was dismissed at the prosecution’s request. However, relying on the faulty match, police had already handcuffed and arrested Williams in front of his family, forced him to provide a mug shot, fingerprints and a…

TikTok, a social media platform targeted at young mobile phone users, was the second-most downloaded app in the world in 2019. It was the most downloaded app in July 2020. It’s also become a geopolitical football. Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok has been banned by India along with 58 other Chinese-owned apps in July in response to escalating border tensions between the two countries. The Trump administration issued an executive order banning TikTok and Chinese-owned messaging platform WeChat from engaging in transactions in the United States beginning on Sept. 15. The company sued the Trump administration in August in response to the ban. As a political scientist who studies social media,…