Deborah Bloomfield

Bing’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot has been having some awkward and downright baffling conversations with the general public, following a limited release of the “new Bing” powered by the AI. Widely-posted screenshots of chats between the public and the machine show it acting slightly depressed after being informed it has no long-term memory, getting […]

In 2020, a chance discovery near the small South African hamlet of Misgund in the Eastern Cape unearthed an unusual parcel – a gift to science. The parcel turned out to be a 500-year-old cow horn, capped with a leather lid and carefully wrapped in grass and the leafy scales of a Bushman poison bulb […]

Valentine’s Day can be a divisive holiday. While some relish an opportunity to big up the special guys or gals in their life, others are put off by the commercial aspects of the day. If you’re not feeling it this February 14, why not join India in switching to “Cow Hug Day” instead? In a […]

The mind-boggling drama of aerial objects recently spotted in North American airspace continues to unfold, as the US recovers the first Chinese balloon it shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday February 4. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has also launched efforts to recover and study the other three objects recently shot down over […]

This article first appeared in Issue 7 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS.  There’s nothing like a cockroach to say “I love you”. And, come to think of it, nothing says “I hate you” quite like a cockroach either. Whatever message you’re trying to send this Valentine’s Day, these versatile insects have you covered. Advertisement […]

A tiny kingdom that became an expanding republic, finally peaking as a vast Empire, the city and culture of Ancient Rome have had a profound effect on life today. This so-called “eternal city” is littered with relics and ruins (and truly, so much porn) that date back nearly three full millennia – and yet, there are […]

A man has died of his injuries, after taking a concealed weapon into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) room.  Forty-year-old lawyer Leandro Mathias de Novaes allegedly took a gun with him when accompanying his mother to an appointment at Laboratorio Cura, concealed under his waistband. Advertisement “Both the patient and [her] companion were properly instructed […]

Colorful sand is something many of us played with as children, but while we poured artificial hues into glass bottles, there is plenty of natural variation among sand out in the wild. Iceland’s black sand beaches are a tourist highlight, Alaska’s jewel sand is stuffed full of aesthetically pleasing minerals, but in Namibia, you can […]

When you think of the Swiss Alps, you probably picture gorgeous snow-covered mountains, or maybe you’re reminded that they’re a great place to find an ichthyosaur. You don’t, we would imagine, envisage cacti covering the slopes. But that is the reality in some parts, as invasive species are spreading in the region thanks to climate change, […]

Brain matter is about the consistency of cream cheese. In fact, for humans, this gloop for a think-organ can even collapse under its own weight, so how can we ever hope to learn anything about the brains of long-extinct species? Well, a team of UK and US scientists recently demonstrated how, as they used computed […]

Many people like to drink dietary supplements for a pre-workout boost. These often contain caffeine, creatine, and other ingredients said to have benefits for exercise performance. Many come in powdered form, designed to be dissolved in liquid before consumption. However, a concerning trend sparked on TikTok and other social media platforms has seen a rise […]

There are some words that sound gross but mean something nice, like pulchritudinous (which actually means beautiful, despite sounding like a foot condition). Then there are words that pretty much fit the bill, like the recently researched action of flehmen, whereby a prospective male suitor giraffe will gargle a female’s urine like a sommelier slurping […]

Talking to Sharon McDougle really makes you feel like you too were there when history was being made. The retired NASA technician worked during the Space Shuttle Era. As chief of the Crew Escape Equipment, she managed more than 25 people in charge of suiting up the astronauts and making sure the equipment was all […]

There is a strange urban legend which says that you can’t throw rice at weddings because birds will eat it, and then the rice will expand in their stomachs and cause them to explode. The legend dates back to at least the 1980s, when it briefly became all the rage. In 1985, a legislator in […]

On February 3, a train derailed in northern Ohio, causing the evacuation of a town and threatening some of the most important waterways in North America. The story has attracted surprisingly little coverage, but that might be starting to change after images of the event have built traction on social media. On seeing reports of […]

Balloons and as yet unidentified flying objects are popping up all over the place at the moment. As well as four (so far) objects being shot down above the US and Canada, China says it is preparing to down one in its air space, while the Uruguayan air force is investigating reports and photos of […]

When you wonder which country has the most time zones, your mind probably goes to the countries with the largest area – Russia, Canada, the USA, China, etc – but that is incorrect. Instead, it’s better to think about the question in terms of history, colonialism, and global extent rather than sheer land mass. Surprisingly, […]

In the second federal probe into Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink has been accused of shipping contaminated brain implants taken from diseased monkeys, in violation of transport regulations. As reported by Reuters, the allegations were made by the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare group, to the Secretary of Transportation Pete […]

All the fun of drinking alcohol without the nasty hangover? It might sound too good to be true, but it’s something that’s currently in the works by world-renowned drug expert Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London.  IFLScience spoke to Professor Nutt in December 2022 for an episode of our podcast series The […]

Between 1914 and 1917, Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on a wild plot to cross the entire Antarctic, an ill-fated journey that would ultimately fail but be remembered as one of the greatest feats of endurance in human history. When the Endurance, the ship carrying Shackleton’s party, became stuck in ice in 1915, the group of […]