The Conversation

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk a mile (or 1.6 kilometers) in somebody else’s shoes? Or have you ever tried to send a telepathic message to a partner in transit to “pick up milk on your way home”?Recent advances in brain-computer interfaces are turning the science fantasy of transmitting thoughts directly from one brain to another into reality.

In recent years, hundreds of new synthetic recreational drugs have emerged – drugs that neither the general public nor the scientific community know very much about. Many of these new synthetic drugs – often referred to as “legal highs” – are dangerous and continue to lead to poisonings throughout the US and the rest of the world.These drugs provide similar highs to other, more well-known drugs, like marijuana and cocaine. Many are still legal and others have only recently become illegal.So why would people use these potentially harmful new drugs?

Most of the times we have looked at Uranus, it has seemed to be a relatively calm place. Well, yes its atmosphere is the coldest place in the solar system. But, when we picture the seventh planet in our solar system invariably the image of a calming blue hazy disc that the spacecraft Voyager 2 took in 1986 comes to mind.However, all we have previously known about the atmosphere of Uranus has been ’thrown to the wind’ with observations made last year.

The number of women in paid employment has risen significantly over the past 40 years. In developed countries especially, there are increasing numbers of women reaching top positions in different fields of work. And new research shows how girls are doing far better than boys educationally across the world.

Sunday marks the 106th celebration of International Women’s Day. Since New Yorkers first celebrated it in 1909, American women have made great strides toward equality in the workplace, politics and at home. Long gone are the days when women couldn’t vote or sex discrimination was blatant and legal.

Planning permission has been given for what could become the world’s largest offshore wind farm on the Dogger Bank, off England’s east coast. If fully constructed, the project will have up to 400 turbines with a total generation capacity of 2.4 GW. That’s enough to power 1.9 million households – more than Manchester and Birmingham combined.

The NASA spacecraft Dawn has spent more than seven years traveling across the Solar System to intercept the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Now in orbit around Ceres, the probe has returned the first images and data from these distant objects. But inside Dawn itself is another first – the spacecraft is the first exploratory space mission to use an electrically-powered ion engine rather than conventional rockets.

Evaluations of research ethics do not benefit from a tick-box approach. 
Australia’s social science research, like that in most developed countries since the infamous Milgram experiments took place at my alma mater in 1961, occurs under the watchful eye of ethics boards.

New gaps are opening up in educational achievement between teenage boys and girls, according to a comprehensive new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).Analysis of its 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science across countries, shows that unfortunately, patterns between the performance of girls and boys have not changed much over time, although some of the gaps have closed a little.

The search for alternative energy sources in the age of climate change has overlooked tidal energy: a vast and unexploited worldwide resource.For three decades now, tidal lagoon schemes have been recommended as an economically and environmentally attractive alternative to tidal barrages. More recently, two proposals for tidal lagoons in Swansea Bay, Wales have emerged and there have been several reports documenting how such a project there could have the potential to harness significant energy resources.

According to a 2014 National Consumers League poll, 29% of American adults believe that childhood vaccinations can trigger autism. To many, these views are difficult to comprehend. After all, multiple controlled studies conducted on huge international samples have debunked any statistical association between vaccines and autism.

Immigration continues to be one of the key issues in the build-up to the general election. The latest figures show a net flow of 298,000 into the UK. This is higher than when David Cameron’s government took office, despite his pledge to cut the number to the tens of thousands.But is this really bad news? Immigration is such an emotive issue that there is a tendency for the figures involved to be bandied about out of context.