Snip!t channels - Alan Dix

Technology is starting to behave in intelligent and unpr... even its creators don’t understand. As machines increa... events, how can we regain control?

How we interpret our feelings depends on where and how w... says professor Lisa Feldman Barrett - and not understand... our lives harder

Reading frequency is also at a historic low, with 20.5% of eight- to 18-year-olds reporting reading daily in their free time, compared with 28% last year.
The gender gap in reading enjoyment has widened, with 28.2% of boys aged eight to 18 ...

In The Shape of Things Unseen, neurologist Adam Zeman attempts to explain how and why this is. It is a wide-ranging survey – too wide, offering a mass of fascinating information about creativity, mental imagery and child development blo...

“We found that quality of life improved as the frequency of interaction with ICTs increased, whereas quality of life deteriorated as frequency of interaction with newer workplace technologies rose,” the report said.

Governments and private companies should contribute to a global artificial intelligence fund that will allow developing nations to benefit from advances in the technology, according to a UN report.
The fund would help provide models, comput...

The more our media channels are flooded with deep fakes ... various kinds, the more we have the feeling of sinking i... quicksand.

Is it possible there are modes of attention that a younger generation is developing that might be difficult for those of us who are older to value, but which bring new types of benefit? What of the rapid, quick-fire, written exchanges of in...

Examining the relationship between parental income and that of their offspring in their mid-30s, the study confirms the obvious: richer parents beget richer kids.
More interesting is how economic outcomes of those from low-, middle- and top...

Last Wednesday was a landmark moment for the tech industry, or at any rate for that part of it that aspires to do business in the EU. It was the day when six of the biggest companies in the world had to start complying with the EU’s Digit...

Isolate growth from public good and you are simply planning for breakdown. My research shows that a resilient society should be rooted in wellbeing, not wealth

Lord Blunkett, education secretary from 1997 to 2001, added: “Sure Start was always one of those programmes that the public yearned for, but politicians rarely deliver. Namely, a long-term policy without short-term electoral gain, but tra...

The other striking story from this year’s results is the huge and growing popularity of maths, which becomes the first A-level to exceed 100,000 entries, while 17,000 pupils took further maths, making it the subject with the biggest year-...

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss thinktank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civ...

Gifts were the biggest contributor to the total, accounting for more than 93% of emissions, according to ClimatePartner, which carried out the analysis on behalf of the Guardian, using market research provided by Finder.
It found the averag...

Inspired by Ed Hawkins’ climate stripes, the new air quality stripes show air pollution from 1850 to today. Each year is a separate vertical bar that is coloured according to the amount of particle pollution. Air that meets World Health O...

Nuclear is costly, risky and slow, Ramana says. Why then, he asks in his new book, do governments still champion it?

The first piece of advice was: “You should mostly eat food you know is healthy. There is no magic food.”
And the second? That was: “You should also occasionally let yourself eat delicious food you know isn’t healthy. Otherwise, what...

Almost 1,000 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured in military drone attacks across Africa as the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles continues unchecked on the continent, according to a report.

‘I can’t remember anything’ is a common complaint ... it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do... and distractions stop us forming new memories?

And while 23% of the UK workforce is from a working-class background, working-class people are underrepresented in every area of arts and culture. They make up 8.4% of those working in film, TV, radio and photography, while in museums, arch...

So Gagne studied for a PhD, and became a therapist. She thinks her detachment was helpful. “If you are constantly projecting your own emotions into the session, they’re not going to be able to process what they’re feeling.”

My theory was that all the physical places interconnected by apps had a way of resembling one another. In the case of the cafes, the growth of Instagram gave international cafe owners and baristas a way to follow one another in real time an...

Using brain imaging, scientists have built a map displaying how words and their meanings are represented across different regions of the brain

rain responds more strongly to information about unfavou... groups, offering clues as to how prejudice emerges and s... shows

Scientists incentivised to publish surprising results fr... journals, despite risk that such findings are likely to ... research

Besides altering the quality of our memories, switching ... can influence people’s financial decision-making and t... moral dilemmas. By speaking a second language, we can ev... rational, more open-minded and better equipped to deal w...

An internationally important collection of shells, including specimens from Captain Cook’s final voyage, has been rediscovered 40 years after it was thought to have been thrown into a skip.
More than 200 shells have been returned to Engli...

Each participant was presented with a three-word starting sentence that flashed up for 300ms, followed by a second sentence that was either identical or differed by one word. Participants were asked to indicate whether the sentences matched...

Scientists show it is possible to control a virtual car and switch on real-world kettle from inside a lucid dream