The secret to taking better penalties
Practise with an augmented-reality headset
ARE YOU reading, Gareth Southgate? As the England football manager prepares for this year’s European championship, a Swiss neuroscientist is offering some help with the England team’s Achilles heel: penalty shoot-outs. (As a player, Mr Southgate is perhaps best remembered for missing a decisive spot-kick in a shoot-out against Germany in 1996.)
Penalty kicks are used at the knockout stage of major tournaments to determine the outcome of drawn games. They have decided the winner in more than 20% of World Cup matches, including the final in 2022, when France lost to Argentina. More than 30% of shoot-out kicks are missed, but pros and pundits disagree on the value of practising them.
China has become a scientific superpower
From plant biology to superconductor physics the country is at the cutting edge
Like people, elephants call each other by name
And anthropoexceptionalism takes another tumble
Elon Musk’s Starship makes a test flight without exploding
Crucially, the upper stage of the giant rocket survived atmospheric re-entry
China has become a scientific superpower
From plant biology to superconductor physics the country is at the cutting edge
Like people, elephants call each other by name
And anthropoexceptionalism takes another tumble
Elon Musk’s Starship makes a test flight without exploding
Crucially, the upper stage of the giant rocket survived atmospheric re-entry
Zany ideas to slow polar melting are gathering momentum
Giant curtains to keep warm water away from glaciers strike some as too risky
The quest to build robots that look and behave like humans
The engineering challenges involved are fiendish, but worth tackling
Robots are suddenly getting cleverer. What’s changed?
There is more to AI than ChatGPT