science

Technology of the ancients

We tend to think of ourselves as advanced, and ancient civilizations as primitive. But archaeology and anthropology keep dishing up examples that contradict this simplistic understanding.

03.2025 | Robert Law Smith

The mystery of consciousness

What is consciousness, when did it evolve, how does it differ between people, and why do we need it in the first place?

01.2025 | Eugene Yiga

Pythagoras and his cult: Unravelling the mysteries of an ancient mathematical sect

Pythagoras is synonymous with the Pythagorean theorem, a fundamental concept in mathematics that students encounter early on in their maths education.

12.2024 | G.H. Thacker

Pigeons and AI

When machine learning and artificial intelligence have crept into our dinner talk, it’s fair to say they have entered the mainstream of our lives to the point of no return.

11.2024 | Adrian Ephraim

Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre

A long time ago, in the more innocent time of the distant past, say, 2000, the words ‘Studies show’ were enough to end any argument. The appeal to the authority of science was enough to stop any charlatan in his tracks and restore sanity and balance to the world.

10.2024 | Les March

PART 1: The Hazards of travelling to Mars: Isolation and confinement

As humans, we have an inherent need for connection and social interaction with others. It is no surprise that we are social beings with social needs. Simultaneously, as we look to broaden our horizons, we enter environments that are not wellsuited to our needs.

09.2024 | Joshua Gordon

How we can (or can’t) experience the Schrödinger’s cat principle in everyday life

In the world’s most famous thought experiment, physicist Erwin Schrödinger described the uncertain predicament of a cat in a box.

09.2024 | Debby Edelstein

What they don’t teach at engineering school (and what they do)

The chances are good that you’ve been exposed to the overuse of the phrases problem-solving and critical thinking. Almost in the next breath, you’ve probably heard about the insatiable demand for engineers in the workplace.

07.2024 | Rachel Edelstein

Decoding birds' brain signals into syllables of song

Could the unique song of a bird someday, miraculously, help give a voice to people who have lost the ability to speak?

06.2024 | Adrian Ephraim

What I learned making a video game

In 1981, the arcade game Centipede was released by Atari, a world leader of the video game market in the late 20th century. Following the same formula as several other famous arcade games of the time, such as Pac-Man and Galaxian, the game involves a moving, player-controlled object (also known as the Bug Blaster) that tries to eliminate the enemy (Centipede) that appears on the screen.

05.2024 | Rachel Edelstein

How rudeness leads to Anchoring in life and death situations

We’ve seen it all too often. A rush of blood to the head, a moment of insanity, an “emotional” decision taken through the spoken word, or an action that can never be taken back.

01.2024 | Adrian Ephraim

Tick tock….around the clock

From complicated pocket watches to iconic clocks to decorative wrist watches… there’s a fascinating world behind the multi-billion-dollar timepiece industry.

11.2013 | ngrid Wood

Why do we forget?

Contrary to the popular belief that memories simply fade with time and forgetting is an early sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, a new theory suggests that forgetting is actually a form of learning

11.2023 | Adrian Ephraim

Artificial intelligence vs the world.

‘Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov’ was a clashing of six game chess matches between World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and IBM supercomputer Deep Blue

10.2023 | Josh Gordon

Yes, they really are listening to us

Amidst all the revolutions that are sweeping the world, from economic to political, the omnipresent Fourth Industrial Revolution keeps powering ahead with no sign of reaching a peak or slowing down. One aspect of it which receives surprisingly little media coverage and rarely enters discussion is the radical development of voice profiling.

09.2023 | Athalie Russell Besseling

How Gaming Conquered the World

For many, the 70s marked the beginnings of the true modern phenomenon that is broadcast television. In 1976 South Africans gathered around these boxy units with fiddly buttons and bunny ear aerials waiting to be amazed, and they would not be disappointed.

08.2023 | Alistair Duff

The Mysteries of Pain

Thought experiment: Take your left foot (bare) and secure it in place with some sturdy leather straps on a wooden board. Take a rusty drill bit; attach it to an electric drill.

06.2023 | RL Drake

Medicine, Pigeons and Pattern Recognition

Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of regularities in data. In recent years, and particularly with the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, it has become significant to many industries.

04.2023 | Rachel Edelstein

The Numbers Game

Has the data analytics revolution made football better in the last decade? Your answer may depend on whether your own favoured team has become better – or worse.

04.2023 | Carlos Amato

Maths anxiety in midlife

We know that maths is important. It helps us to learn critical thinking and develops the muscles of problem solving. Great minds describe it as a universal language and there are even those who see beauty and poetry in its order.

03.2023 | Debby Edelstein

The future of flight technology

The delicately beautiful butterfly finds itself at the centre of new research which reveals a secret hiding in plain sight that could influence the future of flying technology.

02.2023 | Adrian Ephraim

The future is animated

Our desire to see into the future is as old as it is obvious: with prescience comes the ability to avoid major catastrophes, as well as capitalise on boons.

07.2022 | Lee Blake

The 4^thIndustrial Revolution Series: The internet of things

“Imagine a world”, I would say, “where your bathroom scale speaks to your fridge. Your fridge then speaks to your supermarket, and they all decide to put you on diet.

05.2022 | Barry Dwolatzky

When Good Ideas Go Bad

Tesla. Edison. Bell. Turing. We know these names because these names changed the world. We place great value on innovation, technology and progress

05.2022 | RL Drake

Liespotting series: Even more lies Part 3

In the modern era, there has been the propensity to demonise lying and to judge those caught in the act of deceit. From business leaders like Madoff to truly global leaders like Clinton

04.2022 | Alistair Duff

Behavioural Economics in action - Climate change

A qualified high school student is accepted to university but gets confused while applying for financial aid and fails to enrol. An individual with HIV is prescribed free antiretroviral medications but fails to take them consistently.

02.2022 | Joshua Gordon

Have you ever felt like a fraud?

While much has been written about the mindset of very successful people, from their strategies and beliefs to their general outlook, surprisingly little has been said about a very real drawback many will face during their careers.

02.2022 | Alistair Duff

A likely successor to the information age

These days, catchphrases and conceptual hype turn any passing fads into megatrends – or attempt to. Real ‘Ages’ however, are rare.

12.2021 | LEO

How we know what we know

Why do so many people believe things that aren’t true, even when unprecedented access to information and evidence should change their minds?

08.2021 | Eugene Yiga

Learning in traffic

The microlearning revolution

Two years ago I loaded Duolingo on to my phone to learn a few sentences of conversational Spanish before a holiday.

07.2021 | Debby Edelstein

Bowling alleys and social capital

You might ask what bowling alleys have to do with social cohesion? Or even what relationship exists between individual health predictors and membership in a book club?

05.2021 | Kim Segel

Can IQ determine your quality of life

In a previous article the ubiquitous presence of online IQ testing was both noted and questioned. The obvious conclusions were that the validity of any findings are likely to be less than entirely accurate

04.2021 | Alistair Duff

The 4th Industrial Revolution Series: The Robots are NOT coming

When the short stocky man in the front row started to shout at me, I was horrified. He waved his hands as he growled in a deep voice. He blamed me for “this Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

04.2021 | Barry Dwolatzky

Wasteful saving and the curious case for negative interest rates

Oscar Wilde’s whimsical 1800’s quote “money was made to be spent, therefore, to save it is a waste of money” recently became true. This is the result of the growing global phenomenon of negative interest rates.

03.2021 | Jon Stilwell

High achievers

History of biohacking and performance enhancement

From the ancient Greek Olympians to modern technopreneurs, human beings have always looked to outperform each other.

02.2021 | Debra Shepherd

Liespotting series:
A beginner’s guide to becoming a human lie detecting machine

In a previous article we discussed the emergence of the study of lies. We discussed the heavy lifting scientific work done by Ekman and Matsumoto and the amazing contributions that they have made to our understanding of this science.

02.2021 | Alistair Duff

The weird world of quantum computers

The magician gazed out at his audience. “It’s a cold night,” he said. “Does anyone have a pair of gloves I can borrow?”

01.2021 | Barry Dwolatzky

Reward hacking: Moving beyond goal-driven behavior

At the risk of significantly over-simplifying the field, software development is achieved by articulating a certain goal or objective and mapping out a logical, algorithmically-based method of getting there.

11.2020 | Barry Morisse

No laughing matter

2019’s Joker was about a failed comedian, Arthur Fleck. Fleck tells people he has a laughing disorder. Although it was not actually mentioned what the disorder was, it was most likely based on what is known as pseudobulbar affect (PBA).

07.2020 | Lee Blake

Can mindfulness treat depression?

Psychiatrists are pragmatic people. There’s compassion and empathy, yes, but there’s also extreme firmness – especially when it comes to biopsychosocial treatment protocols for patients with depression.

07.2020 | Tiffany Markman

A cut and paste tool for human DNA

Genetic engineering is one of those fields of science that make people feel queasy.

07.2020 | RL Drake

Liespotting Series: Decoding the language of lies

Paul Ekman was named one Time Magazine’s Top 100 most influential people in May 2009.

06.2020 | Alistair Duff

Physics for the philosophical investor

A good share of modern physics is based on the laws of thermodynamics, which help us to understand how matter and energy relate to one another in closed systems, such as the universe.

06.2020 | Jon Stilwell

Will machines ever become conscious?

The nature of consciousness is something that has been debated for centuries by philosophers, neuroscientists, ethicists, biologists and the like, with very little progress having been made.

06.2020 | Barry Morisse

Just because I’m good at it, does not mean I like it.

Psychometric testing is the best known and most highly regarded method for measuring individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioral styles. Most commonly, psychometrics are used for career guidance and the evaluation of job suitability for a particular role based on personality characteristics and cognitive abilities.

04.2020 | Rachel Edelstein

The art of reading body language

“You talking to me? You talking to me?

Remember the young Robert de Niro’s famous line in Taxi Driver? Oh, the on-screen menace he conveyed physically,

03.2020 | Athalie Russell Besseling

AI Series: The impact of artificial intelligence on our work identity

The rise of advanced artificial intelligence is real and lurks on the horizon, requiring a significant shift in the way we view ourselves and our place in society.

01.2018 | Barry Morisse

AI Series: Can machines make ethical choices?

Once we start to see our ethics reflected back to us in the form of machine decision-making, are we going to like what we see?

01.2018 | Barry Morisse

The history of IQ

An 11-year-old Harvard undergrad inspired the ubiquitous saying “early ripe, early ruin”.

10.2017 | Alistair Duff