When I need to get out of my head, I go to Ellwood. This stretch of bluffs along the coast in western Goleta has trails through open grasslands and small paths that wind down to a wide beach, where you can find driftwood forts and views out to the Channel Islands. At its north end, a eucalyptus grove is home to winter roosts of monarchs. I have happy memories of wandering through the trees with a group of preschoolers in rainboots. When the sun broke through the clouds, dozens of the monarchs and their orange wings descended from the branches…

Self-driving cars which eliminate traffic jams, getting a healthcare diagnosis instantly without leaving your home, or feeling the touch of loved ones based across the continent may sound like the stuff of science fiction. But new research, led by the University of Bristol and published today in the journal Nature Electronics, could make all this and more a step closer to reality thanks to a radical breakthrough in semiconductor technology. The futuristic concepts rely on the ability to communicate and transfer vast volumes of data much faster than existing networks. So physicists have developed an innovative way to accelerate this…

The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this. Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. Image: CC-BY Tom Stafford 2022 For me though, there is an incredibly strong depth illusion – the blue and the red appear as if they are at different distances. I can enhance the effect by blinking rapidly, turning the brightness up on my screen and viewing in a dark room. Sometimes it disappears for a few seconds before snapping back in. Because the colours appear at different depths they even appear to glide…

While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at.  Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published.  And after we reached out to the authors, the lead…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the United States’ top public health official, recently claimed some religious groups avoid the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it contains “aborted fetus debris” and “DNA particles”. The US is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states. At the same time, Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines. So what can we make of his latest claims? Credit: Annie Rice/AP, provided by The Conversation There’s no fetal debris in the MMR vaccine…