Giving children the wrong (or not enough) toys may doom a society
Survival is a case of child’s play
GIVERS OF EDUCATIONAL gifts, rejoice: despite the eye-rolls you may receive on Christmas morning, you are part of a long and valuable tradition. In cultures around the world, toys have been used to teach children what they need to know about the society they live in. When the toys teach the right skills, the children are prepared for adulthood and thrive. When they do not, calamity beckons.
Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all
We analyse two centuries of scholarly work
Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why
Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a role
Humans and Neanderthals met often, but only one event matters
The mystery of exactly how people left Africa deepens
Machine translation is almost a solved problem
But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
AI can bring back a person’s own voice
And it can generate sentences trained on their own writing
Carbon emissions from tourism are rising disproportionately fast
The industry is failing to make itself greener