The nature vs nurture debate is one of science’s longer-running questions, and it doesn’t seem likely it will be settled any time soon. But a newly-published study shows the issue isn’t confined to the human race. Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College, Maine, and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University have published an article in Current Biology […]
Apple has stopped distributing an iPhone app that allowed users easy access to leaked US cables published by WikiLeaks. But it may be that the deletion has something to do with a technical breach of the App Store rules rather than the nature of the app itself. The application, named simply WikiLeaks App, was produced […]
Geekery was popular in the early 19th century, but its heyday began in the 1980s. That’s just one conclusion to be drawn from a fascinating new tool from Google. The Google Book Ngram Viewer allows users to search for the popularity of words in 5.2 million books that the company has scanned and digitized: that’s […]
According to the Federal Communications Commission, the majority of American “broadband” users are not actually receiving broadband speed. That’s because the FCC currently defines broadband as requiring a download speed of at least 4Mbps and an upload speed of 1Mbps. In total, 68 percent of broadband connections in the US fall short of this speed. […]
The US military has come up with a cunning way to prevent the leaks of classified documents: it has banned troops from using removable media. The move appears to be a response to claims by soldier Bradley Manning that he was not only responsible for the leak of both a video of a helicopter attack […]
Today Youtube announced that it was lifting the restriction it’s placed on the length of video content being uploaded to their platform. This is great news, because we don’t have to chop our videos into 15-minute chunks to get them uploaded and playable. The Catch “Starting today, we’ll begin allowing selected users with a history […]
When drawing up legislation or regulations covering recreational drugs, it’s important to get advice from scientists. Until this week, I’d have considered that a statement of fact. It turns out it’s merely an opinion, and one not shared by the British government. A proposed new law in the country would remove an existing requirement for […]
A Japanese bid to bring the football World Cup to stadiums around the world via holograms has been rejected. Soccer’s governing body FIFA today announced that the 2022 finals will take place in Qatar. Japan was one of the bids for that tournament that reached the final vote. As part of a presentation to voters, […]
Google has confirmed it plans to launch an e-book store before the end of the year, challenging the likes of Amazon’s Kindle store. The Google project was originally planned to launch this summer but was held up by technical and legal problems. The main selling point of the store, to be known as Google Editions, […]
Facebook has come a step closer to trademarking the word “Face” online. But the context appears narrower than the company hoped and it’s far from certain how many competitors it can crack down on. The US Patent and Trademark Office has issued a notice of allowance, which is effectively a ruling that the trademark is […]