The Conversation
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On the origin of 4-4-2: evolution, animals and football
Natural selection has shaped many different animal groups, from V-like formations of bird flocks to circular mills of schooling fish. These shapes are the result of millions of years of […]
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After Kepler, what is next for the planet hunters?
The Kepler telescope is limping. Since 2013, it has not been able to point with sufficient accuracy to planet hunt in its original field, which caused a temporary halt to […]
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Found: the missing part of brain’s ‘internal compass’
If you have taken a walk and would like to return home you need to have an idea of where you are in relation to your destination. To do this, […]
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Revealed: the unparalled scale of big data analysis behind Santa’s naughty or nice list
After a year in which further details of national intelligence agencies’ shadowy surveillance networks were laid bare, a fresh leak of documents reveals the obsessive surveillance that extends as far […]
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We’re simply having an analogue Christmas time
We’ve found that despite the torrent of phones, tablets, laptops and other gizmos that might be given as gifts, the Christmas holiday has not yet been thoroughly infiltrated by technology […]
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Milk bottle-raiding birds pass on thieving ways to their flock
Great tits are opportunistic copycats. Entire populations can be found performing the same arbitrary behaviour simply because birds copy one another, following a fashion. And it’s this behaviour, reported in […]
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Where’s the proof in science? There is none
What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Those people looking for proof to come from any research in science will […]
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Monster telescope needs mind-bending mathematics to uncover secrets of the universe
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be made up of an unprecedented number of antennae spread across two continents for the first time (Australia and Africa). The SKA will see the […]
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Clumped cancer cells spread more efficiently through the body than lone ones
Nine out of ten cancer patients die because cancer cells enter the blood circulation, spread and form tumours at distant organs. In circulation, cells can move individually or in a […]