32 articles from SATURDAY 2.10.2021

The relationship sabotage scale: quantifying why we undermine ourselves in love

Developed over the course of five studies, the relationship sabotage scale is designed to give analytical rigour to a term more common in pop cultureDo you feel constantly criticised by your partner? Do you sometimes check their social media profiles? Will you admit to them if you know you’re wrong about something?If you strongly agree or disagree with some of these statements, you might find...

Robots: stealing our jobs or solving labour shortages?

From fast food to farming, Covid-19 has accelerated the rise of the worker robots. This in turn will put more jobs at risk and makes the need to reframe society ever more urgentAs the coronavirus pandemic enveloped the world last year, businesses increasingly turned to automation in order to address rapidly changing conditions. Floor-cleaning and microbe-zapping disinfecting robots were introduced...

Directly into the brain: A 3D multifunctional and flexible neural interface

Although measuring the electrical activity of neurons is useful in many disciplines, making durable neural interfacing brain chip implants with negligible adverse effects has proven challenging. Now, scientists have developed a flexible multifunctional neural interface that can not only register local brain activity in real time, but also deliver a steady flow of drugs through innovative...

Gene therapy can restore vision after stroke

Vision loss can be a side effect from stroke. Neurons don't regenerate, and stem cell therapy is costly, difficult, and chancy. Researchers have figured out a way to use gene therapy to recover lost vision after a stroke in a mouse model.

Cake was my first love – it sees me through life’s highs and lows

There should be no guilt with cake, only romance – in the making, the display, the history… and, of course, the eatingThe Great British Bake Off is back! Sales of baking utensils skyrocket when the amateur baking show is on. It appears we’re all cake mad. But I’ve always been mad as a box of doughnuts for cake, long before the GBBO started. In fact, it’s one of my loves – not one of my...

Doctors, receptionists and practice teams quit after wave of hostility over GP appointments

Fears of mass exodus as abuse by patients skyrockets over blood tests, jabs and face-to-face consultationsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSenior doctors have warned that practice staff and GPs are quitting after an unprecedented and escalating wave of abuse from patients that has followed weeks of public pressure over face-to-face appointments.Practice managers,...

The truth about artificial intelligence? It isn't that honest | John Naughton

Tests of natural language processing models show that the bigger they are, the bigger liars they are. Should we be worried?We are, as the critic George Steiner observed, “language animals”. Perhaps that’s why we are fascinated by other creatures that appear to have language – dolphins, whales, apes, birds and so on. In her fascinating book, Atlas of AI, Kate Crawford relates how, at the...