Scientists Like Me Are Studying Your Tweets–Are You OK With That? As researchers, we have a responsibility to acknowledge that factors like the type of data, the creator of that data, and our intended use for the data are important when it comes to using public information.

    Where We Live and How We Die What a year of death looks like around the world.

    Was Gamification a Terrible Lie? Turning work into play was sold as a miracle for increasing productivity–but was that ever really plausible?

    The Most Subversive Way to Travel Perhaps the humble bicycle, a transportation mode that puts people in contact with one another and gives them back that control they seem to crave, offers a unique opportunity to remake those realities for the better.

    The Roots of an Epidemic From apartheid labor policies to everyday sexism, socio-political issues influence the spread of TB disease and the effectiveness of health responses. To tackle the epidemic, we need systemic changes.

    Your Classroom Is Making You Fail Almost everyt traditional classroom design makes it harder to learn–yet the fixes are often simple.

    The Human Machine

    A series about the increasingly blurred lines between us and our machines.
    Ian Steadman
    Aug 23, 2017

    The ID Question

    Who decides who you are? You, or the world around you?
    Anjali Ramachandran
    Nov 22, 2017

    A Noxious Problem

    Smog in cities and smoke in the home cause a huge range of short- and long-term health conditions. Why is the world’s biggest public health crisis only getting worse?
    How We Get To Next
    Oct 24, 2018

    Beats: Space

    Space is where we project our dreams–and our nightmares–of the future.

    Beats: Food

    Food structures our day, and food systems shape our world

    Beats: Disability

    “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    Beats: Health

    Access to health care is as much a matter of public policy as it is the size of a person’s pocketbook; within a doctor’s office, many factors affect the quality of treatment.

    Humanizing Data: Highlights from EYEO 2018

    A dispatch from the 2018 edition of the conference on technology and culture.
    Duncan Geere
    Jun 14, 2018 2 min read

    Noise Pollution Is Making the Oceans Unbearable for Underwater Life

    Every ten years, noise from commercial shipping is doubling. But studying what that noise is doing to ocean creatures in situ is fiendishly difficult.
    Rose George
    Oct 12, 2018 4 min read

    Can a Computer Learn to Dance?

    The biggest problem for robots understanding dance is the same as for humans–notation.
    Gillian Rhodes
    May 13, 2016 4 min read