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We used 60-year-old notebooks to find out why male hippos have bigger tusks than females

Given that male hippos compete fiercely for access to females, we fully expected that adult males would be significantly larger in body size and have bigger tusks. It came as a surprise to discover that males only weighed on average 5% more than females.

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Reducing poverty can actually lower energy demand, finds research

Marta Baltruszewicz, University of Leeds As people around the world escape poverty, you might expect their energy use to increase. But my research in Nepal, Vietnam, and Zambia found the opposite: lower levels of deprivation were linked to lower levels of energy demand. What is behind this counter-intuitive finding? After all, the prevailing strategy to…

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Your phone and your brain – what we know so far

Daniel B. le Roux, Stellenbosch University A defining characteristic of the way many people live today is persistent online connectedness. Since the introduction of smartphones about 15 years ago, the rapid and broad adoption of these devices has had an impact on people’s behaviour at all hours of the day. Forecasts suggest that the number…

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Those facebook quizes are fun, aren’t they?

I’ve noticed an increase in Facebook quizes in my feed the past few weeks. They are typically shared by the extremely active facebook “friends” and even appear as “suggested for you” posts or “sponsored” posts in my timeline. The problem with these are that they almost always invite you to overshare information on social media….

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Remember, Apple AirTags and ‘Find My’ app only work because of a vast, largely covert tracking network

Paul Haskell-Dowland, Edith Cowan University Apple recently launched the latest version of its operating system, iOS 14.5, which features the much-anticipated app tracking transparency function, bolstering the tech giant’s privacy credentials. But iOS 14.5 also introduced support for the new Apple AirTag, which risks doing the opposite. For the uninitiated, an AirTag is a small…