Robots and us
Three leaders in their fields answer questions about our relationships with robot When asked ‘Should robots be used to colonise other planets?’, cosmology and astrophysics Professor Martin Rees said he believed the solar system would be mapped by robotic craft by the end of the century. ‘The next step would be mining of asteroids, enabling […]
How stress affects our judgement
Some of the most important decisions of our lives occur while we’re feeling stressed and anxious. From medical decisions to financial and professional ones, we are all sometimes required to weigh up information under stressful conditions. But do we become better or worse at processing and using information under such circumstances? My colleague and I, […]
When evolution runs backwards
Evolution isn’t supposed to run backwards – yet an increasing number of examples show that it does and that it can sometimes represent the future of a species. The description of any animal as an ‘evolutionary throwback’ is controversial. For the better part of a century, most biologists have been reluctant to use those words, […]
The psychology of innovation
Why are so few companies truly innovative? Innovation is key to business survival, and companies put substantial resources into inspiring employees to develop new ideas. There are, nevertheless, people working in luxurious, state-of-the-art centres designed to stimulate innovation who find that their environment doesn’t make them feel at all creative. And there are those who […]
[IELTS Reading] – An Introduction to Film Sound
Though we might think of film as an essentially visual experience, we really cannot afford to underestimate the importance of film sound. A meaningful sound track is often as complicated as the image on the screen, and is ultimately just as much the responsibility of the director. The entire sound track consists of three essential […]
Great Migrations
Animal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of animals. It can loosely be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals – often in an annual cycle – that may involve many members of a species, and is rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests inherited instinct. […]
[IELTS Reading] – Saving the soil
More than a third of the Earth’s top layer is at risk. Is there hope for our planet’s most precious resource? A More than a third of the world’s soil is endangered, according to a recent UN report. If we don’t slow the decline, all farmable soil could be gone in 60 years. Since soil […]
[IELTS Reading] – Making the most of trends
Experts from Harvard Business School give advice to managers Most managers can identify the major trends of the day. But it the course of conducting research in a number of industries and working directly with companies, we have discovered that managers often fail to recognize the less obvious but profound ways these trends are influencing […]
[IELTS Reading] – Artificial artist?
Can computers really create works of art? The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have […]
[IELTS Reading] – Why fairy tales are really scary tales
Some people think that fairy tales are just stories to amuse children, but their universal and enduring appeal may be due to more serious reasons People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red […]
Is the era of artificial speech translation upon us?
Once the stuff of science fiction, technology that enables people to talk using different languages is now here. But how effective is it? Noise, Alex Waibel tells me, is one of the major challenges that artificial speech translation has to meet. A device may be able to recognize speech in a laboratory, or a meeting […]
