Author: The Conversation

The big idea A new type of material can learn and improve its ability to deal with unexpected forces thanks to a unique lattice structure with connections of variable stiffness, as described in a new paper by my colleagues and me. The new material is a type of architected material, which gets its properties mainly from the geometry and specific traits of its design rather than what it is made out of. Take hook-and-loop fabric closures like Velcro, for example. It doesn’t matter whether it is made from cotton, plastic or any other substance. As long as one side is a fabric…

In the UK, a quarter of people who take their own lives were in contact with a health professional the previous week, and most have spoken to someone within the last month. Yet assessing patient suicide risk remains extremely difficult. There were 5,219 recorded deaths by suicide in England in 2021. While the suicide rate in England and Wales has declined by around 31% since 1981, the majority of this decrease happened before 2000. Suicide is three times more common in men than in women, and this gap has increased over time. A study conducted in October 2022, led by the Black Dog Institute in…

A Victorian coroner has cited problematic gaming behaviour as the driver of a mood disorder which contributed to the 2019 death of regional school boy Oliver Cronin. The findings from Coroner Paresa Spanos’s investigation were released on Wednesday. Spanos wrote in the report: In the 12 months preceding his death, Oliver appears to have become obsessed or addicted to video gaming. He became irrational and aggressive at times. His parents tried to restrict his access to the gaming devices in an attempt to temper this behaviour, but this led to an escalation in Oliver’s behaviour escalating to verbal and physical abuse against his…

You might suppose Hollywood is good at predicting the future. Indeed, Robert Wallace, head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and the US equivalent of MI6’s fictional Q, has recounted how Russian spies would watch the latest Bond movie to see what technologies might be coming their way. Hollywood’s continuing obsession with killer robots might therefore be of significant concern. The newest such movie is Apple TV’s forthcoming sex robot courtroom drama Dolly. I never thought I’d write the phrase “sex robot courtroom drama”, but there you go. Based on a 2011 short story by Elizabeth Bear, the plot concerns a billionaire killed by…

We all have to make hard decisions from time to time. The hardest of my life was whether or not to change research fields after my PhD, from fundamental physics to climate physics. I had job offers that could have taken me in either direction – one to join Stephen Hawking’s Relativity and Gravitation Group at Cambridge University, another to join the Met Office as a scientific civil servant. I wrote down the pros and cons of both options as one is supposed to do, but then couldn’t make up my mind at all. Like Buridan’s donkey, I was unable to move to either the…

When Facebook reinvented itself into Meta in October 2021, it was widely reported that Meta would be focusing on virtual reality (VR) by being at the forefront of the metaverse. But Meta has not given up on the world of bricks and mortar yet, as reflected by the company’s massive investment in augmented reality (AR) glasses. My research considers smart real estate and human-computer interactions in smart environments. Meta is only one among many companies betting that the future of physical space will involve merging with digital space, resulting in an augmentation of our reality. Apple, Google, Snap, Microsoft and a string of…

Recently, when scrolling through TikTok – purely for research purposes of course – we paused on a video “spilling the tea” (that means sharing the goss) on the hottest new social media app, BeReal. As social media researchers and teachers of Gen Z university students, we try to stay current with the latest trends. BeReal is a refreshing change from curated feeds – however, as with most new social media platforms, free speech issues may lurk just around the corner. @itvnews Why are people switching their social apps to BeReal? #learnontiktok #bereal #trending #genz #socialmedia ♬ original sound – itvnews A…

From learning numbers to learning how to brush your teeth, it seems there’s a kids’ app for everything. Recent US statistics indicate more than half of toddlers and three-quarters of preschoolers regularly access mobile apps. So it’s no surprise there has been an explosion of options within the app market to keep kids engaged. These apps certainly offer some fun interactive experiences, not to mention good educational content in many cases. They’re also very good at keeping young minds engaged. So what’s the catch? You just read it: they are very good at keeping young minds engaged – so much that kids can struggle…

Microcredentials — attestations of proficiency in a specific skill or knowledge base that are certified by an authority — can provide evidence of a person’s skills to employers. While microcredentials are becoming more popular, the concept is hardly new: A driver’s licence or the St. John Ambulance certificate could be considered as microcredentials, attesting respectively to a person’s driving skill or their competency in administering first aid. Blockchain technology is appropriate for microcredential implementation. Blockchain can best be described as a digital ledger that records information that can be shared among a community of users. Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are the best-known examples of blockchain, but…

This week, Todd Sampson’s documentary Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate screened on Channel Ten. The documentary focuses on harms that occur through social media and online platforms. It raises important points about the need for awareness and regulation, but these are often crowded out by alarmist tropes that don’t reflect what we know from decades of research into digital technologies. Left unchallenged, they can prompt unnecessary worry and distract us from having important conversations about how to make technology better. As digital media researchers, here are some of the claims we think people should approach with caution. Digital technology and ADHD While…