The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 349 million people in 79 countries are facing "acute food insecurity," an increase of 200 million people from before the pandemic. This sudden surge has caused the organization and others like it to warn that the world is hungrier than ever. There are several reasons for the dangerous food shortage, and world leaders caution that the lack of needed nutrition will lead to death and massive social upheaval. Gauging the Global Food Crisis Public h ...read more
Old-school paleontologists would have frowned upon a colleague referring to a fossil find as anything like a dragon. Certainly in the early days of this branch of science, it must have been a tad exasperating to explain to non-scientists that the giant bone they found in the local quarry, or ground up for some folk remedy was not evidence of a legendary cryptid, but was instead a precious artifact worthy of preservation and legitimate study. But if additions to the fossil record over the pas ...read more
In 1929 Ridgley Whiteman, then just a teenager, made an archeological discovery that would forever change our understanding of the first Indigenous people to land in North America. He found what would later be known as Clovis points, named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, the site of their discovery. The fluted projectile points, dating back 13,000 years, show that ancestral Indigenous people not only lived in North America but also had the technology to hunt megafauna like woolly mammoth ...read more
WiFi sensing could provide a low cost way to monitor vulnerable people at home with greater privacy than cameras. But the technique raises its own set of privacy issues. ...read more
With the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies, virtual or digital workers may threaten some jobs even as they boost other opportunities. ...read more
Most off-the-shelf video games do little to improve cognitive abilities. But certain well-designed ones can enhance proficiency at skills such as “task switching,” also known as multitasking. ...read more
From the parasitic fungus in "The Last of Us Part II" to plant genetics in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons," examples of real-life science in gaming might be right under your nose. ...read more
