Category: Technology

FOR decades, doctors and governments have been trying to wean smokers from their habit. It is a tricky task. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine. There are plenty of officially endorsed methods for quitting. People can try inhalators, gum, lozenges, patches, nasal sprays and prescription drugs. All can help, but few replicate all […]

THE deep sea is full of fantastical creatures. Gelatinous pink sea pigs shovel food with arms like tiny sea anemones. Delicate tripod fish stand on chopstick-like stilts. Barreleye fish have transparent heads that reveal all their internal workings. Giant larvaceans hold a well-deserved spot on this list of curiosities. Shaped like oversized sperm, with a […]

print-edition iconPrint edition | Science and technology Sep 20th 2018 YUSAKU MAEZAWA is a Japanese fashion billionaire. If he gets his way, in 2023 he will become the first person to visit the Moon since Eugene Cernan, an American astronaut, left in 1972. Unlike Mr Cernan, Mr Maezawa will not land. Instead, he will zoom […]

print-edition iconPrint edition | Science and technology Sep 20th 2018 CELLS divide many times throughout their lives. But they cannot do it indefinitely. Once they have reached the limits of their reproductive powers, they enter a state called “senescence”, in which they carry on performing their duties but stop making new copies of themselves. For […]

AS MISMATCHES go, it’s a big one. When physicists bring the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity together they get a clear prediction. In the very early universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have come into being. Since the one famously annihilates the other, the result should be […]

ONE tale of Nasreddin, a self-satirising 13th-century philosopher, tells of the time he lost a precious ring. When his wife asks why he is searching in the yard rather than inside, where the ring was lost, Nasreddin explains that the light is better outside. Looking for something where the search is easiest is a form […]

MANY scientists have championed the idea that publicly funded research should be available to all and not locked away in pricey journals. Although this “open access” ethos has become more popular in recent years, most researchers’ work remains fenced off by an online paywall. That may change with a radical European initiative unveiled earlier this […]

print-edition iconPrint edition | Science and technology Sep 13th 2018 CHRISTIANITY and conservation have not always gone hand in hand. Yet the structures raised by Christians to exercise their faith offer tangible sanctuary to some of God’s smaller creatures. Bats, famously, roost in belfries. And, according to a paper just published in Biological Conservation, churches […]

OF ALL the plastic produced since the 1950s, less than 10% has been recycled. The vast majority ends up being dumped, most of it in landfill. Some is left to litter the natural environment, where it can get into rivers and wash out into the sea (see article). The plastic-waste problem will worsen before it […]

FEW things exercise green sensibilities more these days than marine plastic litter. The detritus looks unsightly when it washes up on beaches, and cruel when it chokes photogenic sea creatures. Scientists estimate that perhaps 8m tonnes of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, discharged by rivers or shed from ships. Plenty stays close to […]