
Understanding how Taylor Swift constructs her songs helps explain her phenomenal popularity
In 2023, Forbes published an article about Taylor Swift that included the following mind-boggling statistic: 55 per cent of adults in the United States identify themselves as Swift fans. In the wake of her recent epic...

How Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok could be helping bring about an era of techno-fascism
Elon Musks update of his chatbot Grok went seriously awry recently when it started spouting antisemitic comments and presented itself as Mecha-Hitler. Less than two weeks later, xAI, the company that developed Grok,...

Around the world, climate change is being tackled, not just in parliaments and global summits, but also in villages and farming communities. In these local spaces, lives and livelihoods depend directly on natural...

AI chatbots can boost public health in Africa – why language inclusion matters
Language technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI) hold significant potential for public health. From outbreak detection systems that scan global news in real time, to chatbots providing mental health...

Surprise results in search for South African lizard species that have been missing for decades
What happens when a species has not been seen by anyone for decades? Environmentalists think of these as lost species. We do not know if theyve gone extinct, or if its simply that nobody has looked for them. There are more...

Togo’s ‘Nana-Benz’: how cheap Chinese imports of African fabrics has hurt the famous women traders
The manufacturing of African print textiles has shifted to China in the 21st century. While they are widely consumed in African countries and symbolic of the continent the rise of made in China has undermined the African...

Gene editing technology could be used to save species on the brink of extinction
Earths biodiversity is in crisis. An imminent sixth mass extinction threatens beloved and important wildlife. It also threatens to reduce the amount of genetic diversity or variation within species. This variation in...