Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Covid closure is needed. Congress blew its chance
News, FD Flam, Published on 07/06/2024
» Congress blew its chance on Monday to give Americans some insight into the Covid pandemic that dominated our lives for years. Following a 15-month inquiry, Republicans on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called Anthony Fauci to testify in public at a special hearing, but committee members spent most of the time posturing rather than probing the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Deepfakes will hijack your brain -- if you let them
News, F D Flam, Published on 22/02/2024
» Realistic AI-generated images and voice recordings may be the newest threat to democracy, but they're part of a longstanding family of deceptions. The way to fight so-called deepfakes isn't to develop some rumour-busting form of AI or to train the public to spot fake images. A better tactic would be to encourage a few well-known critical thinking methods -- refocusing our attention, reconsidering our sources, and questioning ourselves.
Musk must be more transparent about Neuralink
News, F D Flam, Published on 05/02/2024
» When researchers with Elon Musk's company Neuralink implanted a chip in someone's brain, they were working under a Food and Drug Administration clearance. But that doesn't mean this experiment was safe or ethical.
Ditch Google to avoid fake news
News, FD Flam, Published on 15/01/2024
» Searching for information has become instant and effortless -- just go to your nearest device, ask Siri or click a few keys. But are we better informed than we were before Google became a verb?
Are scientific breakthroughs on the decline?
News, F.D. Flam, Published on 27/12/2023
» This year had barely begun when scientists got some jolting news. On Jan 4, a paper appeared in Nature claiming that disruptive scientific findings have been waning since 1945. An accompanying graph showed all fields on a steep downhill slide.
The biggest threat was at home
News, FD Flam, Published on 25/12/2023
» A new trove of data from 7 million contacts have revealed that Covid-19 doesn't spread the way many people think it does.
Rise of mixed-sex athletics will be good for sport
News, FD Flam, Published on 11/09/2023
» The assumption that an athlete's birth sex dictates his or her performance level has made transgender participation in sports a lightning rod -- but the issue is moot in a growing number of coed sports, from competitive sailing to pickleball to esports. And in the future, athletics are likely to evolve so that mixed-gender competition becomes much more common. That will lead to a rise in sports that are just as riveting, but more inclusive.
Want to use less air conditioning? Turn on a fan
News, FD Flam, Published on 25/07/2023
» Earlier this year, the UK attempted to go coal-free. But an increased need for air conditioning forced the usually temperate country to reverse itself and restart an old coal-fired power plant -- after only 46 days.
'Frankenstein chemicals' trump 'forever chemicals'
Oped, FD Flam, Published on 07/07/2023
» Health fads come and go, but drinking more water (and less beer and soda) is one of the few things that's unequivocally good for the human body. It should be as easy as putting a glass under the tap, but what kinds of potentially harmful chemicals lurk there? News that 3M is paying more than US$10 billion (351 billion baht) to clean "forever chemicals" from municipal drinking water isn't helping our confidence.
Watch Apple TV's Extrapolations for the science, not the story
Life, Faye Flam, Published on 10/04/2023
» Hollywood has long mined global warming to create terrifying scenarios of apocalyptic futures. Some of these aren't very realistic. Others are all preaching and no teaching. But the new Apple TV series Extrapolations takes a different, more science-steeped approach -- the episodes cascade through the future of this century, using real scientific projections and computer-generated special effects to show how global warming might play out under the most likely scenario.