Science and Technology

Tuesday, 15 April 2025 04:52

Is it finally safe to ditch your phone case? I put it to the test

Thomas Germain With smartphones tougher than ever, a new wave of phone minimalists say cases are for cowards. I joined the case-free cult, called the experts and braced for the sound of broken glass. A few months ago I walked into an Apple store to buy a new iPhone. After sifting through models and upgrades, a cheerful salesperson told me the price came to $1,199 (£919). She laughed when I mentioned that's close to what I pay for a month's rent. "Crazy, isn't it?" she said. "Now let's look at some phone cases." It felt like the obvious next step. …

Thursday, 10 April 2025 04:29

FAAN introduces advanced luggage screening at Lagos airport, phases out physical checks

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has discontinued manual luggage screening at Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, following the installation of cutting-edge Rapiscan security systems. The newly deployed Orion 928DX scanners—among the most advanced in global aviation—now handle baggage checks, significantly reducing passenger processing times while enhancing detection capabilities. Four high-capacity machines have been installed at MMIA, capable of identifying narcotics, explosives, concealed currency, and other prohibited items with high accuracy. Physical searches will now only occur when the scanners flag suspicious items. Additionally, surveillance monitors have been set up for border control agencies, including the Nigeria Immigration…

Tuesday, 08 April 2025 04:45

Artificial sweetener saccharin found to kill deadly drug-resistant bacteria, boost antibiotic power

Antibiotic resistance, a mounting crisis in global health, emerges when bacteria evolve to survive treatments meant to eliminate them. This makes once-manageable infections difficult — and sometimes impossible — to treat. The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in healthcare and agriculture have accelerated this evolution, allowing resistant strains to thrive, spread, and share their survival traits with other bacteria. According to the World Health Organization, resistant pathogens like Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa — which cause severe infections in vulnerable patients — are now among the most dangerous. In 2019 alone, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) claimed 1.27 million lives, with nearly…

Friday, 28 March 2025 04:04

Bill Gates: Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers—humans won’t be needed ‘for most things’

Tom Huddleston Jr. Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed “for most things” in the world, says Bill Gates. That’s what the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist told comedian Jimmy Fallon during an interview on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in February. At the moment, expertise remains “rare,” Gates explained, pointing to human specialists we still rely on in many fields, including “a great doctor” or “a great teacher.” But “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said. In other…

Wednesday, 26 March 2025 04:37

How long does automatic transmission fluid last and when should you change it?

Everybody makes a big deal about regular engine oil changes, and with good reason. Just like any other part of a vehicle, oil wears down during constant use and needs to be replaced to ensure your vehicle keeps operating at peak efficiency. In fact, oil might be the hardest working part of your vehicle seeing as how it gets squeezed and circulated through your engine thousands of times per minute and suffers through a gazillion heat cycles over the course of its lifetime. What about transmission fluid, though? That does a lot of work, especially in a car or truck…

Tuesday, 25 March 2025 04:37

Eating this fruit could lower depression risk, study shows

Kloe Quill The gut has long been linked to overall health, underscoring the importance of feeding it well. A new study shows that eating citrus fruits, such as oranges, may lower the risk of depression by about 20% — and experts say it’s due to the way it interacts with the stomach. The study, published in the journal Microbiome, found that the positive effects of citrus are linked to how the fruits impact the gut microbiome, which includes the bacteria living in the stomach. The researchers analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS2), which began in 1989 and…

Saturday, 15 March 2025 04:04

Humanoid robot with human-like competence unveiled in China

Du Qiongfang Humanoid robot manufacturer AgiBot in Shanghai unveiled on Tuesday its latest humanoid robot model which achieves nearly human-like mobility such as riding a bicycle and balancing on a hoverboard. With its prompt responding competence in interaction with users, the robot showcases the perfect integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and humanoid robot technology, presenting a great application potential in scenarios such as elderly care services and family companionship. In a video released by Peng Zhihui, co-founder of AgiBot or Zhiyuan Robotics, the 1.3-meter tall and 33.8-kilogram Lingxi X2 humanoid robot showcases its excellent sports, interaction and operation competence. It…

Wednesday, 12 March 2025 04:28

From chatbots to intelligent toys: How AI is booming in China

Laura Bicker Head in hands, eight-year-old Timmy muttered to himself as he tried to beat a robot powered by artificial intelligence at a game of chess. But this was not an AI showroom or laboratory – this robot was living on a coffee table in a Beijing apartment, along with Timmy. The first night it came home, Timmy hugged his little robot friend before heading to bed. He doesn't have a name for it – yet. "It's like a little teacher or a little friend," the boy said, as he showed his mum the next move he was considering on…

Monday, 24 February 2025 04:08

How AI is affecting the way kids learn to read and write

Kayla Jimenez For Lisa Parry, a 12th grade teacher in South Dakota, the students' essays were getting stale. Her solution: get the students to turn to ChatGPT — which serves up fresh ideas. Before her students could decide on what to write for their book report on "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal," Parry told them to ask the AI chatbot to craft a topic about the fast-food industry. Parry's class had finished reading the book and she didn't want to read another essay about the effects of fast food on the human body, a common…

Tuesday, 18 February 2025 04:39

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: How I use AI in my own everyday life—it’s great for ‘boring’ tasks

Megan Sauer You might think OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, head of the company that makes ChatGPT, uses artificial intelligence chatbots in highly complex ways. Not necessarily, according to Altman himself. “I use [AI] in the boring ways,” he told Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s “ReThinking” podcast, in an episode that published last month. “I use it for like, ‘Help me process all of this email’ or ’Help me summarize this document.” Altman is in good company: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company makes many of the high-powered computer chips that power AI large language models, primarily uses chatbots to help…

More...

Wednesday, 12 February 2025 04:55

2 uses of AI in healthcare that may be reducing the burden on doctors

Renee Onque Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a steady increase in the number of healthcare workers quitting their jobs. And though the industry is focused on hiring, the burden on the remaining doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals is still a heavy one. “We have fewer and fewer people in healthcare. We saw a huge attrition of doctors and nurses post-Covid, and our patients and our community’s getting older,” says Nishit Patel, the vice president and chief medical informatics officer at Tampa General Hospital. “The math doesn’t work unless you have something that…

Sunday, 09 February 2025 04:19

Elon Musk put a chip in this paralysed man’s brain. Now he can move things with his mind

Jeney Kleeman Noland Arbaugh’s life changed in a fraction of a second in June 2016. He was a 22-year-old student, working at a kids’ summer camp in upstate New York, when he went swimming in a lake. He can’t tell me exactly what happened, but thinks one of his friends must have accidentally struck him very hard in the side of his head as they ran into the water and plunged beneath the surface. When he woke up face down in the water, unable to move or breathe, Noland immediately knew he was paralysed. But he didn’t panic. He felt…

Monday, 03 February 2025 04:01

OpenAI introduces new AI tool to assist in research tasks

Leading generative artificial intelligence company OpenAI unveiled a new AI tool on Sunday named "Deep Research," designed to perform multi-step online research for complex tasks. The tool leverages a specialized version of OpenAI's upcoming o3 model, tailored for web browsing and data analysis. Users can input a prompt, and OpenAI's ChatGPT will search, analyze, and synthesize various online sources—including text, images, and PDFs—to generate a detailed report comparable to the work of a research analyst. OpenAI highlighted the tool's efficiency, stating, "It accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours." However, the company also noted that…

Tuesday, 28 January 2025 04:12

From data to destiny — How AI can turbocharge your business future

Suri Nuthalapati Key Takeaways Reliable data is the cornerstone of successful AI-driven decision-making and innovation. Data governance, modern architectures and automation ensure data quality and reliability for AI. AI-powered insights depend on breaking silos, mitigating bias and prioritizing data ethics. As AI transforms various industries, its effectiveness hinges on a single, vital factor: reliable data. Without a solid data foundation, even the most sophisticated AI systems can struggle to deliver results. Data is the lifeblood of AI. Machine learning models, predictive analytics and other AI-driven tools rely on accurate, timely and relevant data to function effectively. Poor-quality data can lead…

Page 1 of 30

Science and Technology

More...

Search

Most Read

Editorial

News

Business

Politics

Opinion

Features

Strangely

Crime

Wars

SCIENCE & TECH

SPECIAL REPORTS

Sports

VIDEOS