Article archive

Thinking the unthinkable: tracing language back 15,000 years

09/12/2013 17:04
By Michael Dunn, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Just about everyone has a personal stake in language, and many people — expert and amateur — feel entitled to an opinion. But linguists care more than most people, and when linguistics hit the media, linguists can get very agitated indeed....

Sorry, but practice alone does not make perfect

09/12/2013 17:02
By Guillermo Campitelli We’ve all heard it before (usually accompanied by repeating hours of music scales or sports drills over and over): Practice makes perfect. But your music teachers and sports coaches were wrong - well, mostly. Practice only accounts for around one third of “perfection”,...

Extending the self: some cold truths on body ownership

09/12/2013 16:59
By Alexander De Foe “Who are you?” Some might ponder this question philosophically, while others will answer straightforwardly: “I am my body and my personality”. But the boundaries of “self” are not as straightforward as we might think. In a newly-published paper in the Journal of the Royal...

Einstein to Weinstein: the lone genius is an exception to the rule

09/12/2013 16:57
By Katherine J Mack Developing a Theory of Everything is physics' Holy Grail. So could it have been completed in recent weeks? And by an outsider, working alone? I haven’t attended Weinstein’s lectures and I haven’t seen his work (very few people have so far), so I’m not going to comment on its...

You’ve had an out-of-body experience, but what kind?

09/12/2013 16:56
By Alexander De Foe Have you ever felt as though your sense of awareness was outside of your physical body? That you were looking back at yourself from another place in the same room? If so, you’ve probably had an out-of-body experience (OBE). But not all OBEs are the same. [Read more] ...  

Thinking critically on critical thinking: why scientists' skills need to spread

09/12/2013 15:28
By Rachel Grieve When we think of science and maths, stereotypical visions of lab coats, test-tubes, and formulae often spring to mind. But more important than these stereotypes are the methods that underpin the work scientists do – namely generating and systematically testing hypotheses. A key...

Kinky genes: how we fit three metres of DNA into a cell nucleus

09/12/2013 15:27
By Tim Mercer When scientists first decided to sequence the human genome, it seemed an impossibly large and complicated challenge. A decade since achieving this aim, scientists are faced with a similarly overwhelming challenge: understanding the folding of a human’s entire genetic data into a tiny...

Why arts and science are better together

09/12/2013 15:26
By Benjamin Miller The arts and science are often thought of as polar opposites. Traditionally, students and universities view them as separate entities – you pick a degree in one or the other and stick to your side of the fence. Increasingly though, this way of doing things is not enough to...

Explainer: what is RNA?

09/12/2013 15:24
 By Merlin Crossley Our genetic material is encoded in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA is famous. But you may also have also heard of RNA (ribonucleic acid). So, what is RNA, and what is it good for? Quite a lot really. In fact, it is possible that early life used RNA as its genetic material...

Scientific evidence: what is it and how can we trust it?

09/12/2013 15:22
By Manu Saunders The phrase “scientific evidence” has become part of the vernacular – thrown about like a hot potato during discussions of major environmental, health or social issues. Climate change is one example. The EU’s ban on neonicotinoid pesticides is another.We’ve heard numerous mentions...
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