Health
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The 999 Operator You Never Knew You Had
Imagine a dispatch centre running round the clock, fielding thousands of calls at once, deciding in real time which ones get three…
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The Water Rule That Nobody Invented
Somewhere right now, somebody is gulping down their sixth glass of water because they read they should drink eight a day. They're…
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The Update Has Never Come
Somewhere in your skull, there is a piece of software that has not been patched since the Pleistocene. It runs constantly, in…
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Your Gran Was Wrong. She Was Also Right.
For at least two generations of people who were paying attention in biology class, the annual warning to go and get a…
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The Chip That Rendered Lara Croft Is Now Reading Your Lungs
In 1996, a team at Nvidia had a problem: triangles. Thousands of them, each needing to be transformed, lit, and placed on…
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The Polling Station Never Closes
Somewhere inside you right now, a vote is being held. Not about anything as straightforward as a councillor or a bypass. The…
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The Monk’s Word For What You Did All Day Yesterday
There is a word your doctor might use in a letter about you. It sits in clinical guidelines, on NHS posters, in…
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The Longest Game Of Chinese Whispers In The World
Somewhere in a university in, say, Sweden, a researcher publishes a paper. It's 47 pages long, full of p-values and confidence intervals…
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The Stranger Inside You
For most of human history, we assumed the gut was basically a long tube that processed food, absorbed what was useful, and…
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The Notes In The Margins Of Your DNA
Picture a very old library book – one that's been borrowed so many times that the margins are absolutely crammed with other…