Table of contents for December 2015 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

YEARS AGO, I wrote an article about genius. My research led me, inevitably, to Einstein’s brain. Removed at his death, it’s been studied for decades by scientists looking for the key to creativity. I was told that the topography of his grey matter meant he was perfectly suited to both crunching through single-minded tasks and stepping far enough away from a problem to see it from a new perspective. The explanation made sense, but it never quite satisfied me. Einstein didn’t just make a connection that wasn’t there. He saw the world anew. He realised space and time weren’t fixed. Both were knitted together into an ethereal fabric that could be bent and warped, giving rise to gravity, among other phenomena. For the last century, his description of how the…

Pearly whites WHEN MOST ANIMALS bare their teeth, you’re presented with a mouth filled with white gnashers. But only some of a thornback ray’s teeth are present in its mouth – the vast majority of them are found on its skin. Thornback rays are typically found off the coasts of Europe and western Africa. Like sharks, the rays are covered in dermal denticles, or ‘skin teeth’, that enable them to swim more efficiently. It was research into the differences between the renewal mechanisms of dermal denticles on rays and sharks that led to the creation of this striking image, which was created with an X-ray micro-CT scan. The colours in the picture, taken by Dan Sykes, relate to the density of the materials that make up the ray’s body. High-density…

It’s been good for: WEIGHTLIFTERS PUMPING IRON TWICE a week may help keep your brain young. A team at the University of British Columbia has found that those who worked out with weights had less age-related brain shrinkage than their peers. THE FOLLICLY CHALLENGED IF YOU HANKER after the days when you had a head of luscious hair, you may be in luck. A Columbia University team has found that rapid hair growth can be triggered in mice by giving them drugs that inhibit certain enzymes within their hair follicles. It’s been bad for: DOTING FATHERS ANY FATHER IS likely to beam with joy upon hearing their baby blurt out ‘dada’ for the first time. But their pride is misplaced, a study from the University of Missouri has found. The…

What’s that? A new first-person shooter, perhaps? Way off. It’s an exotic particle proposed as a candidate for the elusive ‘glueball’ by scientists at Vienna University of Technology. So what’s a glueball? It’s a particle made up entirely of gluons – elementary particles that help to bind quarks together to form protons and neutrons. Its existence was first proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Harald Fritzsch in 1972. Okay. What makes them so elusive? Glueballs are so unstable that they can only be detected indirectly by searching for evidence of their decay patterns. This means that researchers must look for the signature particle trails they leave behind as they break down. The team has proposed a mechanism for this decay process. So now they have found them, we can break…

YOU’D HAVE THOUGHT I’d know my own home, but I discovered this week that there’s far more to it than I’d appreciated. I bought myself a nice, sensitive navigational compass, sadly not one with a shiny brass case and engravings of ships, but still a compass in the original style with a quivering needle and a bold arrow for north. I spent a while doing pirouettes and being impressed that the needle could keep up, then I put it down next to a metal ruler on my desk. The needle whizzed round and pointed at the ruler. It had never occurred to me that the ruler might have its own magnetic field. The compass clearly had far more than navigation to offer. Twenty minutes of wandering round my flat, watching…

AUTUMN SAW THE release of The Martian, in which a stranded astronaut must improvise everything needed for his own survival. Today, agencies like the European Space Agency have offices dedicated to space medicine, and the International Space Station is serving as a testbed for medical techniques in space. Before the first manned flights, there was speculation that humans might not be able to withstand space travel. In 1959, US psychiatrists theorised that a detachment from ‘Mother Earth’ might lead to suicidal ‘separation anxiety’. In fact, the first astronauts returned safely from their short hops into space. But longer missions, such as the two-week lunar journeys of the Apollo astronauts, revealed deeper dangers. Astronauts lose bone mass in zero gravity; in 2009, the calcium washed out of astronauts’ bodies actually gummed…

WHILE SCUBA DIVING on the coral reefs surrounding Abaco Island in the Bahamas, I spy a lionfish fluttering in the distance. These graceful animals, with their shroud of venomous spines, normally live on the other side of the world. But here they’re considered to be menacing pests. I watch the creature hovering in front of me and feel strangely conflicted – it is beautiful, but it has to go. It doesn’t flinch as my dive buddy skewers it with a long metal spear. This lionfish will be cooked and eaten, and conservationists are encouraging other people to tuck in to the tasty fish in an attempt to control the spread. But some are also trying to persuade other fish-eaters to get in on the act, including those most toothsome predators:…

HAVING GONE THROUGH a 40-year ‘AI winter’ after too many inflated promises were made in the 1970s, artificial intelligence is getting academics and industrialists excited once more. Google, for instance, recently purchased the AI company Deep Mind for a reported $400m, and is also developing a driverless car, while Amazon is investing heavily in the drone delivery system. With news stories about drones carrying our parcels, and humanless factories in China, it’s not surprising that many people are concerned about what is going to happen to their job. The most pessimistic studies predict that as many as 47 per cent of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. So, will robots replace us and take all our jobs, doing them better, faster and cheaper to boot? I don’t think…

LAST YEAR, PWC produced a report entitled The Future Of Work: A Journey To 2022. It draws on five years of research and points to three potential future trends: a ‘blue world’ of huge corporations built on an employee base that works for them their whole career; an ‘orange world’ where most employment is on a freelance or short-term contract basis; and a ‘green world’ where a company is defined more by its corporate and social responsibility. All these scenarios are impacted by the digital revolution, and the pace of change is creating an unpredictable environment for employers and employees. With advances in robotics and AI, we will definitely see more automation – including automation of things that people wouldn’t dream of being automated today. But I don’t believe that…

The City of Stockholm owns a network of fibre optic cables that run below the city. This is used by the local authority as the backbone that enables a number of cost-saving and environmental initiatives, such as the Green IT project and the e-Stockholm service management programme, and also by industry and academia working together to develop new IT technologies in the Kista Science City. In Santa Cruz, California, big data is helping to keep crime rates down. Computers analyse historical data to work out, at any given moment, the top 10 places a property crime is likely to occur. Police officers in the vicinity who are not engaged in an emergency are then automatically directed to patrol those locations. It’s an example of how having large quantities of granular…

Scientists design a ‘CRISPR’ made from . It includes a series of RNA letters that matches a unique DNA sequence within an organism’s genome. The molecule is CRISPR attached to ‘Cas9’ (shown here in beige). This is an enzyme that uses its RNA ‘guide’ to recognise the target DNA sequence. The CRISPR-Cas9 tool cuts the strands of the target DNA’s double helix, then the cell’s repair machinery will fix the damage – minus the old DNA sequence. The CRISPR technique can be used to delete unwanted or DNA, to find and replace a sequence by adding genetic material – such as a new gene.…

1. Black marlin Maximum speed: 129km/h Range: Australian coast and tropical Indo-Pacific 2. Sailfish Maximum speed: 110km/h Range: Indian and Pacific Oceans 3. Striped marlin Maximum speed: 80km/h Range: Tropical and temperate regions of Indo-Pacific Ocean 4. Wahoo Maximum speed: 78km/h Range: Tropical and sub-tropical waters around the world 5. Mako shark Maximum speed: 74km/h Range: Tropical to temperate waters worldwide 6. Atlantic bluefin tuna Maximum speed: 70km/h Range: Open waters of the Atlantic Ocean 7. Blue shark Maximum speed: 69km/h Range: Deep waters of temperate and tropical oceans 8= Bonefish Maximum speed: 64km/h Range: Shallow, inshore tropical waters 8= Swordfish Maximum speed: 64km/h Range: Tropical and temperate waters of the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific 10. Fourwing flying fish Maximum speed: 56km/h Range: Subtropical waters of the Atlantic and Pacific…

WHAT’S HOT 8K DISPLAYS Neither the public nor the TV industry has exactly rushed to adopt 4K resolution: no UK TV channels broadcast in the format, and there’s only limited content on Netflix and YouTube. But that hasn’t stopped manufacturers cracking on with 8K cameras and screens. The format is intended for use with large screens, with the first commercially available 8K screen – an 85-inch Sharp model – now on sale. WHAT’S NOT You may have seen people riding Swegways – self-balancing electric scooters that look like a Segway without handlebars. But they look like becoming The Craze That Never Was, because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service has declared their use illegal both on pavements and on public roads, citing safety concerns. READER POLL Would you use a Robohon?…

Joseph Fourier The ‘greenhouse effect’, as it’s now known, was discovered in 1824 by French physicist, Joseph Fourier. He calculated that the Earth should be colder than it actually was if it was only warmed by solar radiation. Svante Arrhenius In 1896 this Swedish scientist realised that the burning of coal would increase carbon dioxide and enhance the Earth’s greenhouse effect. He estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide would lead to a temperature rise of around 4°C – not far off the predictions made by modern climate models. Roger Revelle (pictured) and Hans Suess Together, these US scientists overturned previous assumptions and showed that the oceans would not be able to absorb all of the additional carbon dioxide that burning fossil fuels was adding to Earth’s atmosphere. James Lovelock…

20 & 21 NOVEMBER An Evening With The Stars Royal Observatory Greenwich, 5:25pm-7:25pm & 6:45pm-8:45pm, £18, advanced booking essential, rmg.co.uk QUIZ ASTRONOMERS WITH your questions and soak up the stars as you peer through the gigantic Great Equatorial Telescope. 24 NOVEMBER Think Space Lecture Royal Observatory Greenwich, 7pm-8:30pm, £6, rmg.co.uk AT THIS LECTURE, find out about the latest research in astrophysics. 24 NOVEMBER Crack The Case Museum of London, 7pm-10pm, £36, museumoflondon.org.uk TRY OUT MODERN modern crime-prevention techniques at this event, which also takes place on 16 December. But don’t kid yourself that you’re ready to fill Cumberbatch’s shoes just yet. 26 NOVEMBER Crucial Interventions Wellcome Collection, London, 7pm-8pm, free, wellcomecollection.org THE STUNTS SEEN on Jackassare nothing compared to the pain inflicted by 19th-Century surgical implements. Join historian Richard Barnett…

JV Chamary JV has a PhD in evolutionary genetics, making him the perfect chap to investigate the science amateurs who are meddling with DNA. Find out what he discovered on p66. Marcus Chown Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity marks its 100th birthday this month. On p38, astronomer and cosmologist Marcus investigates the theories that may unravel it. Helen Scales Helen is a marine biologist, writer and broadcaster. On p48, she reports on the lionfish that are decimating Caribbean reefs and uncovers an unusual control method… Kevin Surace Kevin is the CEO of Appvance. At one of his TED talks, he painted a picture of a world in which no-one has to work. Is it too good to be true? We chat to him on p53.…

Hang on. Didn’t he die in 1963? He did. But conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F Kennedy have proved more difficult to kill off. So are there any new developments? There are. Wearers of tinfoil hats have long claimed that a famous black and white photograph of Oswald holding a 6.5mm Carcano rifle, the same model used to shoot Kennedy, was faked. They cite inconsistencies in the shot’s shadows and the fact that he looks to be off-balance. Oswald himself also claimed that the picture was a fake. What’s the verdict? Computer scientists at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth University used 3D modelling techniques to accurately recreate and analyse the photo. They found that although Oswald was standing at an unusual angle in the picture, his posture would still…

What did they do? University of Utah researchers attached the arms of male cadavers to a pendulum and swung them into a force-detecting pad to emulate the throwing of a punch. Why did they do that? They wanted to test the theory that the human hand evolved to enable males to engage in fights over women. The idea comes from the fact that we have shorter palms and longer, stronger, more flexible thumbs compared to other apes. What did they find? After testing hundreds of punches, they found that humans are able to strike with double the force when using a clenched fist rather than an open-handed strike. The hand could have evolved due to improvements in manual dexterity while also providing a benefit for those engaging in fisticuffs.…

Fragrant flavours DRINKING WATER MIGHT be better for us than fruit juice or fizzy pop, but sometimes our taste buds yearn for something with a little more flavour. The Right Cup is a scented vessel that tricks your brain into thinking you’re drinking flavoured water. The fruity scent – choose from lemon-lime, orange, mixed berry or apple – is added to the plastic cup during manufacturing, and your brain mistakes the scent for flavour. This approach means you’re not consuming any sugars or chemical preservatives. Patent pending Calming computers THE NEXT TIME you’re sitting at your computer, quietly seething as it does exactly what you didn’t tell it to do, let Bill Gates sort it out. Microsoft is patenting a system that detects when you’re stressed out and helps to…

MASS The ‘Higgs field’ accounts for only about 1 per cent of your mass. 99 per cent is due to a relativistic effect. Specifically, the quarks that compose you are moving so fast they gain mass. Without Einstein, you would weigh only about 1kg! SUNLIGHT According to Einstein, mass is a form of energy and so can be converted into other forms of energy. This is what is happening in the Sun’s core, where nuclear reactions convert about 0.7 per cent of the mass of hydrogen nuclei into heat and, ultimately, sunlight. GOLD An atom absorbs and re-emits light when an electron moves between orbits. The light’s energy (colour) depends on the energy difference between the orbits. Gold ought to appear silver, but its innermost electrons move so fast that…

THERE’S BEEN MUCH talk lately of an ‘existential threat’ from artificial intelligence systems, particularly those embedded within robots. Make machines smart enough, goes the theory, and they’ll soon realise that they could run Planet Earth a lot more efficiently without those pesky, meddling humans. But while such a future ‘singularity’ may be a terrifying prospect, it’s also not likely (most experts agree) to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, there’s another, slightly more prosaic question that’s often overlooked: never mind robots destroying our species, what exactly are we going to do when they’ve taken all our jobs? That’s the question we’ve invited a group of AI and business experts to discuss. We were struck by Appvance CEO Kevin Surace’s recent TED talk, in which he paints a compelling picture of a…

INDUSTRIALISATION The first electronic computing machines emerged in the 1940s, with the programmable, all-digital Colossus machine at Bletchley Park arguably the first modern computer. By the early 1950s they were finding their way into offices, and as computing technology has continued to evolve over the years, they’ve taken on more and more previously ‘human’ tasks. While this has led to mass redundancies at times, the birth of computing has also created entire new industries. COMPUTERS Until the mid-18th Century, goods were manufactured by hand in small workshops, often in people’s homes. The invention of the steam engine, the spinning jenny and machine tools changed all that, leading to the large-scale mills and factories we’re used to today. But the new technologies weren’t popular with everyone, and in the early 19th…

THE CITY OF Bristol is changing. Even as you read this, finishing touches are being put to a network called Bristol is Open that will put one of the UK’s largest cities – which also happens to be home to Focus magazine – among the most advanced ‘smart cities’ in the world. And it’s all happening because cable TV never really caught on in Britain. A decade ago, cable company Rediffusion invested heavily in building a system of ducts below the city streets, to house the cabling for its TV network. When that company folded, some bright spark at the city council – whose exact identity seems lost in the mists of time – realised that might be a useful thing to own, and purchased the ducting for the city.…

BY OUR EXPERT PANEL SUSAN BLACKMORE Susan is Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. Her books include The Meme Machine and Ten Zen Questions DR ALASTAIR GUNN Alastair is a radio astronomer at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester ROBERT MATTHEWS After studying physics at Oxford, Robert became a science writer. He’s a Visiting Professor in Science at Aston University GARETH MITCHELL Starting out as a broadcast engineer, Gareth now writes and presents Click on the BBC World Service LUIS VILLAZON Luis has a BSc in computing and an MSc in zoology from Oxford. His works include How Cows Reach The Ground EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO questions@sciencefocus.com or post to FocusQ&A, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol, BS1 3BN Q TINA HANSON, LITTLEHAMPTON How do…

The book comes printed with guidelines for safe water consumption both in English and local language 1 Tear out a page, insert into a filter holder issued with book 2 Pour dirty water through filter 3 Silver ions — positively-charged particles — interfere with a bacterium’s metabolism, producing substances called reactive oxygen species (ROS) 4 ROS damages the membrane that surrounds a cell, as well as the DNA and proteins. Bacterium dies EVERY YEAR, OVER 3.4 million people die from problems associated with water, hygiene and sanitation. It’s a huge problem, because the vast majority of individuals who live in areas with dirty water don’t even realise that it’s unsafe to drink. To try to solve the issue, Dr Theresa Dankovich created a special type of bacteria-destroying filter paper for…

Plinth was designed for those who use their tablets on the go – at home, on the train and in the office. Use it with your choice of any iPad, tablet, Kindle and smartphone as it was meant to be – wafer thin, light, and instantly available. Plinth flicks open at the touch of a button to provide a rock steady support, with rubber pads and non-slip feet. You can use your Plinth with any case or cover (it provides more angles of support than most cases) – perfect for working on any surface. Available in a choice of colours from only £14.95 including free International delivery. Buy direct at myplinth.co.uk. Web myplinth.co.uk Email john@johnbulldesign.co.uk Tel 01823 431539…

KEY SPECS • Single radiator with push pull fan configuration for optimal cooling • High performance CPU water block from German company Heatkiller • Full cover water block from EK for the GPU • Compact design • Individually braided cables for stunning looks Dino PC has been developing award winning systems for almost a decade. Fascinating and unconventional, combining lightweight and ethereal external designs together with the most powerful core components on the planet – all Dino PCs are simple to use and a pleasure to own. All Dino PC systems are produced in a state-of-the-art facility in the heart of London, demonstrating the continuous investment in R&D required to be a trend-setter and innovate, all Dino PC systems are engineered for the extreme. With Dino PC, you choose your own level of performance and…

The all new Kova is an amazing one-two punch of ROCCAT tech and design. Double the button funtions on a streamlined frame with fine lines and angles reminiscent of a high-end sportscar. Double-powered DPI for precision gaming, finished off with a world class illumination suite integrated into an ambidextrous-use, expertly engineered package. The Kova is double the ROCCAT power in the palm of your hand. Tel +49 (0)40 30 99 495 238 Email tom.loske@roccat.org Web roccat.org…

IN A NUTSHELL Earth’s climate is determined by the interaction of a bewildering number of different processes. But as our ability to measure and analyse the climate has improved, it’s become increasingly clear that man-made carbon emissions are driving rising temperatures. ONCE UPON A time, palm trees flourished in the Arctic and crocodiles basked on Alaskan beaches. There was no ice at either of the poles, and Earth’s average temperature was nearly 23°C (today’s average is around 14.6°C). This was our planet 56 million years ago, a time known as the ‘Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum’. For Earth, global warming is nothing new. Today, the Earth is warming once more. Since 1880, the average global temperature has risen by 0.8°C, and in recent times warming has really escalated, with 10 of the…

1712 British ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invents a steam engine for pumping water out of tin and coal mines. This is the first step on the road to the Industrial Revolution. 1886 German engineer Karl Benz is granted a patent for his first automobile. By 1888 his ‘Motorwagens’ are on sale to the public; the motoring era has begun. 1938 British engineer and amateur climatologist Guy Callendar shows that the planet has warmed by around 0.3°C over the previous 50 years. 1961 American scientist Charles Keeling shows that levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere are rising steadily. 2007 The IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report states: “It is extremely likely (over 95 per cent) that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750.” 2007 The Nobel Prize…

FROM 16 NOVEMBER Deadly 60 Eden, 8pm STEVE BACKSHALL GOES in search of the animals you’d least like to meet. Great white sharks, crocodiles, electric eels, charging rhinos… Steve (pictured below) gets up close and personal, travelling the world so that we can enjoy them from the safety of our sofa. Pass the popcorn. 16 NOVEMBER Explorer: Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown National Geographic, 8pm HOW CAN WE overcome the antipathy towards global warming? Bill Nye the Science Guy has a unique approach, exploring five stages of ‘climate change grief’ with his ‘therapist’ Dr Arnold Schwarzenegger. The journey takes him from denial to acceptance as he investigates how we can heal our ailing planet. 22 NOVEMBER Wild Yellowstone Nat Geo Wild, 6pm THIS TWO-PART series follows a year in the life…

What do you mean by the term ‘unnatural selection’? We use this term simply as a contrast to the natural world, to describe the human-created changes that now dominate the planet. Where do we see this happening? The animals and plants that survive in cities did not exist in their current state in Darwin’s time. Our pets would not survive in the savannahs of Africa – we’ve created many breeds that are not part of the natural world. In humans, we’ve seen increases in intelligence, height and other traits over the past 50 years. Darwin’s theory is generally applied over long periods of time, but scientists are finding that evolutionary change can occur quickly, over a few generations. What’s the most remarkable way in which humans are changing? I think…

…leapt from the top of a skyscraper at Canon Expo 2015 in Paris. Not really… it was a high-res photo. We also checked out the latest 8K displays, mixed reality and creative printing. …caught up with Tim Peake in Cologne, ahead of his trip to the ISS. We even gave him a personalised copy of Focus! Don’t miss our Christmas issue to read the full interview. …paid a visit to the Hyundai Kia Festival of Ideas in Seoul. We got to see a bicycle that purifies water, a car that doubles up as a musical instrument and much more. ON SALE NOW! THE STORIES OF SCIENCE Our new special issue collects the very best articles from our How Do We Know? series. www.buysubscriptions.com/science FOCUS DIGITAL Available for Android • iOS…

AT A RESORT in Turkey, the beach closest to our hotel was spotless but a neighbouring stretch of sand was almost covered with pieces of plastic. Bags, bottles, ropes and other items lay heaped on the shoreline and turned a potentially beautiful spot into a dump. Just offshore, I filmed more plastic bobbing on the swell. The experience was pretty shocking because – like an iceberg – the majority of waste drifts unseen below the waves. I used the shots in a report on the BBC’s News at Six marking the recent introduction of a 5p charge for bags in England. The editors were appalled at the scene. The latest estimate is that some eight million tonnes of plastic are added to the oceans every year and that creates two…

DON’T YOU JUST love Christmas? Me neither. Actually, that’s not quite true. I like the social side of it – seeing friends and relatives, enjoying carol concerts and big feeds. What I object to is the sense of being psychologically manipulated by big business. Economists have been saying for years that we’d all be better off if we could rid ourselves of the emotional blackmail of gift buying. Over 20 years ago, Yale University economist Joel Waldfogel coined the term ‘deadweight loss of Christmas’ to describe the orgy of wealth-destruction that breaks out during the holiday season. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be splurging around £15bn preparing for the festivities, with the bulk of it – around £10bn – going on pressies. That’s great for big business. But according…

IT GIVES A whole new meaning to the phrase ‘booze cruise’: researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have found that Comet Lovejoy is spraying vast amounts of alcohol into the cosmos. The team found 21 organic molecules on the comet in total, including ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. Lovejoy was pumping out up to 500 bottles of wine’s worth of alcohol per second. This is the first time ethyl alcohol has been observed in a comet and the discovery is further evidence that comets may have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life. “The result promotes the idea that comets carry very complex chemistry,” said researcher Stefanie Milam. “During the Late Heavy Bombardment 3.8 billion years ago, when many comets…

HERE’S SOMETHING that’s unlikely to make it to the top of many Christmas lists: cockroaches that can be controlled with a joystick. A team at Case Western Reserve University inserted tiny electrodes into the part of the insects’ brains that respond to antennal and visual stimuli. They then recorded the neuronal activity and filmed the insects’ movements. By making statistical links between movements and spikes in neuronal activity, they were able to figure out the signals associated with the insects walking at different speeds and changing direction. They then passed electrical currents through these same electrodes, turning the insects into remote controlled roaches. Similar experiments in the past worked by stimulating the insects’ antennae, rather than neurones inside the brain. “It’s like a joystick on the animal,” said researcher Joshua…

THERE IS NO doubt in my mind that in the next 10, 20, 50 years, most of the jobs that we know today are going to disappear, because it will be cheaper, quicker and far more efficient to have those tasks carried out by robots and artificial intelligence. But as I see it, the huge wave of disruption that’s coming presents humanity with a great opportunity. The kinds of disruption I’m talking about are already happening – in many cases, without people even realising it. Take driverless cars: to most people they still seem futuristic, but they’ll be on the road in most parts of the world by 2020, and by 2030 human-based cars will be outlawed in many cities, no question. The Bay Area in San Francisco already has…

IF YOU WANT to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on the world of work, you first need to look at what the phrase actually means. Artificial intelligence today consists of several discrete disciplines, resting on independent theories. A few current uses include: image recognition and neural nets for self-driving cars, optimised search algorithms, playing chess or planning routes, and recommendation engines in personal assistants. And there are many more. Just as particle physics is searching for a ‘theory of everything’, so AI lacks (but is generally not searching for) a ‘universal theory of thinking’. Having emerged from several decades in which AI was poorly regarded – partly due to failing to deliver on early over-expectations – AI is now finding practical applications. Insights emerging from such applied AI may…

As soon as you start talking about big data – which is what Bristol is Open is really all about – it’s a small step, in many people’s minds, to Big Brother. With talk of sensor-equipped lamp posts and health monitoring via a state-controlled Internet of Things network, should Bristol citizens be worried? Paul Wilson of Bristol is Open argues that they shouldn’t. “To anyone that’s worried I’d say: ‘What is it you think we’re able to do?’. We’re not seeing your phone, for example – unless you sign up to be part of something we don’t know anything about you at all. If you do choose to be part of some project, then yes, we might be getting some of your data. But it’s always an opt-in process.” We…

Back in the early days of modern computing, mavericks like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates developed operating systems in a garage. The entrepreneurial spirit of early Silicon Valley continues in one of the world’s leading DIY bio groups: BioCurious, which is based in Sunnyvale, California. Since opening almost five years ago, BioCurious has welcomed everyone from entrepreneurs developing proof-of-concept products to high-school students working on their science fair projects. The group grows by two or three members every month, and currently includes anthropologists, physicists and software engineers. One BioCurious community project on bioluminescence was spun-out as Glowing Plant, which raised $485,000 on Kickstarter. Glowing Plant’s former lead scientist, Dr Kyle Taylor, now runs a ‘plant research group’ at BioCurious, where 15 members work on half a dozen projects.…

Q MALCOLM DOUGLAS, DUBLIN If humans became extinct, how long would it take for all traces of us to vanish? A STONEHENGE IS AT least 4,000 years old and still visible today, and monuments buried nearby could be even older. Most modern buildings aren’t that robust, but some traces would likely remain for at least 10,000 years, even if it was just the magnetic trace of the steel bars inside concrete blocks. When Hong Kong Airport was constructed in the 1990s, the island of Chek Lap Kok was flattened and extended, and the straight edge of its northern coastline will be a clue to our civilisation for tens of thousands of years. Our atmosphere also has high levels of plutonium-239 due to nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War. This…

The Super Precision Gyroscope has been designed and built to the highest precision from the very start, made from solid brass with a light-weight aluminium frame. Carefully chosen stainless-steel miniature ball bearings allow it to run smoothly and almost silently. The gyroscope operates at over 12,000 rpm using the provided electric motor and battery pack. The gyroscope comes with a number of attachments allowing numerous configurations to perform scientific, educational or simply mesmerising experiments. The brass disk is machined to microns precision, ensuring the disk is incredibly symmetrical and well balanced. The disk is then computer balanced to an impressive 250th of a gram accuracy! Thus giving the gyroscope a highly balanced, super smooth feel, longer spin and even quieter operation. Visit www.gyroscope.com for details and to see our other…

Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Collection 4, brings together 138 winning and shortlisted entries from the Royal Observatory’s 2015 annual competition. Amateur photographers from across the globe have captured cosmic events at their most breathtaking moments, using everything from pinhole to iPad cameras. A captivating read for scientists, photographers, astronomers and lovers of our mind-blowing universe, this year’s collection is beautifully artistic and includes the fascinating stories behind the photographs. Web harpercollins.co.uk…

APPLE, MICROSOFT, GOOGLE… stop what you’re doing right now! You’ve been getting this ‘intelligent personal assistant’ business all wrong. The way forward isn’t putting a quasi-human persona à la Siri, Cortana et al inside a smartphone; the way forward is putting a smartphone inside a quasi-human shell or, to be more precise, inside a humanoid robot pal that makes Brian from Confused.com look positively surly. At least, that’s what Sharp is banking on as it unveils Robohon, a 19cm-high robot-shaped smartphone that talks to you. Just to be clear, this isn’t some futuristic prototype built to wow the crowds at trade shows. It’s an actual, working consumer product, and it’s going on sale in Japan early next year. And to say it’s dividing opinion in the tech world would be…

WHAT’S GOING ON? A team led by Dr Tawfique Hasan at the Cambridge Graphene Centre has developed a new way of printing using graphene-based ink. Although several graphene printing methods have been demonstrated before, Hasan’s team is the first to achieve the kind of printing speeds that will be needed for the process to become commercially viable. HOW DOES IT WORK? Tiny particles of graphene are suspended in a ‘carrier’ solvent mixture, which is then mixed with conductive, water-based ink. The printed material’s resistance can be controlled by varying the ratio of the ingredients, and the same method could also be used to create inks based on other types of metallic, semiconducting or insulating particles. WHY IS IT USEFUL? Currently, most printed circuits are made from a mixture of carbon…

1 GREENHOUSE GAS A gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and keeps Earth warmer than it would otherwise be, by absorbing heat coming from the Earth’s surface. Examples include methane, ozone and carbon dioxide. 3 SUPERCONTINENT A vast landmass made up of most of Earth’s continental blocks. Supercontinents have formed at least seven times in Earth’s history, the most recent being the supercontinent of Pangaea, which started to break up around 180 million years ago. 4 RADIOCARBON DATING A means of calculating the age of anything containing carbon by assessing the amount of radioactive decay, developed in the late 1940s. 5 TIPPING POINT An abrupt change in global climate from one stable state to another. Some tipping points are thought to be irreversible, comparable to tipping over a glass…

Khan Academy iOS 7.0 or later, iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Android 4.1 or later, free SALMAN KHAN BELIEVES that learning should be free to all, which is why he started educational website the Khan Academy. Now, the redesigned app allows you to learn on the go. It provides access to over 10,000 videos and explanations at all levels of experience, with science and maths being two core disciplines covered. There are quizzes to help solidify the lessons, plus 150,000 maths exercises for those who fancy giving their number-crunching skills a workout. Star Walk 2 iOS 7.0 or later, iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Android 4.0 or later, Vito Technology, £2.29/£2.02 THE BEST-SELLING app Star Walk has now been upgraded to include stunning animated graphics of the constellations, plus oodles more new features to feed your…

Hardback Paperback “Evolution is not just still occurring: it’s taking place faster than ever before, and we’re the reason why” Evolving Ourselves: Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans Oneworld £12.99 ARE HUMANS STILL evolving? Given our ingenuity and the myriad ways we’ve found to outwit the whittling force of natural selection, it can sometimes feel like the answer is ‘no’. But, according to future-thinking venture capitalists Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, human evolution is not just still occurring: it’s taking place faster than ever before, and we’re the reason why. “Over the past century, as our species grew by billions, concentrated in cities, smartened, and domesticated itself and its surroundings, we became the fundamental driver of what lives and dies,” they write. Through this ‘unnatural selection’, Enriquez and Gullans claim that…