The German academic publisher Springer has recently brought out a whole book written by a piece of artificial intelligence software called Beta Writer. The book, Lithium-Ion Batteries: a machine generated summary of current research, can be downloaded free of charge as a PDF.… Read the rest
Author: Brian Clegg
Brian Clegg is a science writer with over 30 books in print. He was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol University between 2015 and 2017.
Interview – Rebecca Nesbit
Rebecca Nesbit studied butterfly migration for her PhD, then worked for a start-up company training honeybees to detect explosives. She now works in science communication and her projects have ranged from a citizen science flying ant survey to visiting universities around the world with Nobel Laureates.… Read the rest
Review: How to Speak Science – Bruce Benamran ***
I can’t remember a book where my mental picture of what the star rating would be has varied so much. At first glance, it looked like a solid 4 star title. It looks fun (despite the odd title – it sounds like it’s a book on public speaking for geeks) and a flick through showed that it covers a huge amount of science topics, mostly physics – so it was promising as a beginner’s overview. … Read the rest
Nano Nightmares
Nanotechnology – manufactured items on the scale of a billionths of a metre – like genetically modified food or nuclear power, often produces a knee-jerk reaction. It’s somehow ‘not natural’ and so is considered scary and dangerous.… Read the rest