Science and Technology

Amid growing competition for radio wave space due to new wireless technologies, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Thursday called on governments to protect radio frequencies allocated to potentially life-saving weather forecasting services. Earth observation services vital to weather forecasts and long-term climate change monitoring, are having to share more… »

Mary K. Feeney, Arizona State University for The Conversation All of the 2019 Nobel Prizes in science were awarded to men. That’s a return to business as usual, after biochemical engineer Frances Arnold won in 2018, for chemistry, and Donna Strickland received the 2018 Nobel Prize… »

Harry Collins, Cardiff University for The Conversation We’re entering the age of artificial intelligence. And as AI programs gets better and better at acting like humans, we will increasingly be faced with the question of whether there’s really anything that special about our own intelligence, or if we… »

Leighton Andrews, Cardiff University for The Conversation Facebook leader Mark Zuckerberg recently took the unusual step of visiting lawmakers in Washington, including President Donald Trump in the White House. The reason? Congress’s anti-trust sub-committee has started demanding documents from Facebook and other big tech firms. It’s… »

By Steven Feldstein A new report from The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds that at least 75 countries are using facial recognition and other forms of artificial intelligence in order to surveil massive numbers of people. A growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor,… »

Mark Maslin, UCL for The Conversation The science of climate change is more than 150 years old and it is probably the most tested area of modern science. However the energy industry, political lobbyists and others have spent the last 30 years sowing doubt about the… »

Yunlong Zhao, University of Surrey for The Conversation Cyborgs are no longer science fiction. The field of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) – which use electrodes, often implanted into the brain, to translate neuronal information into commands capable of controlling external systems such as a computer or robotic arm –… »

Although computer scientist Katie Bouman’s was the face that most appeared on the  internet because she designed an algorithm that produced the image, the extraordinary team that produced the first picture of a black hole was one of three working closely together on one particular aspect of this project. »

Russia and the United States are continuing their losing fight against the inevitable treaty that’s coming for killer robots. Most states participating in the diplomatic talks on lethal autonomous weapons systems have expressed their strong desire to negotiate a new treaty to address mounting concerns. At this week’s Convention on… »

During World Water Week, we spoke with changemaker Maricela Granda, a 25-year-old environmental biotechnology engineer from Ecuador who is developing a way to purify water using banana waste. Granda comes from the Sucumbios province in the northern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known for its oil production. Her community is… »