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Algorithms among us: machine learning and society
achine learning, or the study of algorithms that can learn and act, allows automated decision-making that is both scalable and free of human error.
How tricky is it to make a COVID-19 tracing app?
As we search for a way out of the global coronavirus crisis, there’s been plenty of discussion surrounding a potential COVID-19 tracing app. Many of us carry a mobile phone with us wherever we go, so it seems logical to use this pre-existing infrastructure in the transition towards a ‘new normal’. But how tricky is it to make such an app? What’...
Has lockdown made me bad at sleeping?
We're over a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and it's affected our lives in many ways - including, for many of us, how we sleep. You may have experienced changes to your sleep pattern (particularly if you waved goodbye to your commute last March), your quality of sleep, or even had some very weird or vivid dreams! If so, you're not alone....
What's an arboretum anyway?
An arboretum could be described as a "living library". A beautifully curated collection of woody plants (trees and shrubs) from across the globe, each one carefully labelled and managed. In this episode of the Big Questions Podcast we chat to Ben Jones, Arboretum Curator at the...
George Busby
George followed his lifelong passion for the natural world to read Zoology at Edinburgh University. In Edinburgh, he got hooked on evolutionary science and conservation fieldwork in Africa and has remained in academic scientific research ever since. Following Edinburgh, he studied for further research degrees, including a Masters in...
Artificial Intelligence 1 - Using artificial intelligence to spot patterns
Professor Stephen Roberts explains how machines, whose job it is simply to learn, can help researchers spot scientific needles in data haystacks, which will help us solve some grand challenges.
Understanding COVID-19 transmission, informing control
Tackling a previously unseen pathogen - like the one that causes COVID-19 - is like piecing together a puzzle. There are many different parameters to investigate before the pathogen can be fully understood, and before effective control measures can be put in place. So how do scientists go about solving the puzzle, and why is modelling so...
Ignacio (Nacho) Juarez
My name is Nacho and I come from Avila, a little town up the mountains in central Spain. For my undergrad, I did biology and Biochemistry in Madrid but I decided my thing was to be in the field and not in the lab. My main interest is conservation science and research although I have been involved in several conservation practice projects mostly...
Are video games good for my mental health?
Most of us have probably heard of video games being described as "addictive", but is there evidence of this? Are they damaging to our mental health, or could they actually have a positive impact on our metal wellbeing? In this episode of the Big Questions podcast we're booting up our consoles, and asking Prof Andrew Przybylski, Director of...
