Remember, or not

Why does the way we remember (like all living beings, after all) draw so much attention from scientists? If you ask them and they bother to answer, you’ll get a …

3D printers

The generations that grew up in the 20th century were trained to use specific symbolic representations in encoding the world. Among these, the images of “construction” and “building” had a …

Orphans – and golden

Pharmaceutical companies chase “rare diseases”: they make crazy profits from the drugs for these cases. When a disease affects up to 5 people per 100,000, it is considered rare. In …

Web footprints

Those who believe that cyberspace is the great opportunity to “disappear” (hiding their identity) are sorely mistaken. The conscription of providers (i.e., the data of their customers) is a well-known …

Job stealing

How many clicks does it take to place an order on Amazon? Very few! With zero effort, online, a product from anywhere on the planet arrives right at the buyer’s …

Risky jobs

We can make fun of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but its bosses are ahead. Way ahead. Their latest feat was legislation granting extraction rights for raw materials from extraterrestrial …

Unilateral actions

“Rare earths,” a list of metals with futuristic names such as yttrium, lanthanum, or neodymium (and 14 others), are used everywhere: from the construction of rockets and turbines to the …

Mapping

Which country the map in the photo below corresponds to is difficult for anyone to guess. It is Bangladesh. So, one would assume it is some kind of meteorological map. …

The “bad eye” and the blessing

Belief in the bad eye, in “counter-magic”, charms and blessings is a hallmark of the primitive mind and of humanity’s earliest, superstitious attempt to “protect” itself from dark forces believed …

At a glance

Would it ever cross your mind that something as commonplace as “I’m looking for my keys—where the hell did I leave them?” could become the subject of “scientific research”? No. …

Big ball!

Online shopping for products in a marketplace with over 10 million stores, free messages, calls and video calls, file sharing (even large multimedia files), social networking for both personal and …

Make way!

Autonomous cars? Yes! Autonomous trucks? Yes! (Read a related comment in b&g issue 3). Autonomous flying machines? Yes! Autonomous ships? Autonomous tankers, cargo, Ro-Ro or warships? Not yet, but it …