From virtual reality to noise control: how to manipulate the senses to relieve pain

Mar 30, 2016 14:01 pm UTC| Insights & Views Technology

The next time you habitually search your bathroom cabinet for some pain medication, you may want to consider playing a video game first. Research has shown that psychology plays an important part in how we experience both...

Ban new wind turbines? Not if the bar for declaring them safe is impossibly high

Mar 29, 2016 05:20 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology

The debate about wind farms is clearly not over yet. Last week Australias National Heath and Medical Research Council awarded A$3.3 million to fund two new health studies: one to measure the effect of infrasound on sleep...

How eye tracking gives players a new experience in video games

Mar 29, 2016 05:00 am UTC| Technology

Tracking peoples eye movements is a concept that for a long time has captured peoples imagination. More often than not, the technology has been depicted as part of rather dystopian futures: in the movie Minority Report,...

If we don't own our genes, what protects study subjects in genetic research?

Mar 28, 2016 10:45 am UTC| Technology

On February 25, the White House hosted a forum on the National Institute of Healths Precision Medicine Initiative. This is an ambitious research study that aims to develop targeted drugs and treatments that would vary from...

Athletes look for an edge in a new place: virtual reality

Mar 28, 2016 10:38 am UTC| Sports Technology Entertainment

Virtual reality (VR) appears ready to take the entertainment world by storm in 2016. In addition to the much-hyped Oculus Rift, major corporations such as Facebook, Sony and Samsung are poised to release high-quality VR...

Microsoft's racist chatbot Tay highlights how far AI is from being truly intelligent

Mar 28, 2016 01:19 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology

It has been a nightmare of a PR week for Microsoft. It started with the head of Microsofts Xbox division, Phil Spencer, having to apologise for having scantily clad female dancers dressed as school girls at a party thrown...

Can we replace politicians with robots?

Mar 28, 2016 01:10 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology

If you had the opportunity to vote for a politician you totally trusted, who you were sure had no hidden agendas and who would truly represent the electorates views, you would, right? What if that politician was a...