Addictive Candy Crush video game is officially hard

Feeling guilty about the hours you’ve wasted on Candy Crush Saga? Relax. A mathematical analysis of the notoriously addictive video game reveals that it belongs to a class of fiendish computational problems – and playing it might one day help solve them. Read more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25204-addictive-candy-crush-video-game-is-officially-hard.html#.UyLAQs75FZc […]

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How computer analysts took over at Britain’s top football clubs

Why has David Moyes had such a horror show since taking over as Manchester United manager last summer? From our armchairs, the diagnosis has been relatively straightforward: taking over from a legend is inevitably a fool’s errand; anyone replacing Sir Alex Ferguson was doomed before a ball was kicked. Moyes inherited a patchy squad with too few players at the peak […]

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Reshaping African PhDs for development

With the growing recognition that knowledge and innovation are critical contributors to national wealth and welfare, postgraduate education — specifically doctoral training —has become a priority for African higher education. South Africa’s National Research Foundation launched its PhD project some years ago with the specific intention of ramping up the number of doctoral graduates produced annually by the South […]

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Top 10 Predictions for Mobile Technology in 2014

What a difference a year makes. Over the last twelve months, sales of smartphones surpassed feature phones for the first time, global mobile subscribers hit close to seven billion, and data traffic grew by 80% – thanks largely to emerging market growth. As the year draws to a close, the developing world is not only […]

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Mapping PhD enrolment in Africa

As part of our new series on PhDs and development in Sub-Saharan Africa, SciDev.Net is collating data over a range of issues – from postgraduate enrolment and gender equality to the links between PhDs and economic growth. We aim to gather and visualise the statistics underpinning stories about doctoral investment and growth on the continent. Read more […]

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Q&A: Doctoral research and economic growth in Africa

In this podcast, recorded in Johannesburg, South Africa, Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, talks about the relationship between PhD research and Africa’s future social and economic development. He argues that, as developing nations become ever more dependent on knowledge-based industries, the need to have high-quality skills, innovation and outputs becomes increasingly […]

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Big data from cheap phones

At a computer in her office at the Havard School of Public Health in Boston, epidemiologist Caroline Buckee points to a dot on a map of Kenya’s Western highlands representing one of the nation’s thousands of cell phone towers. In the fight against malaria, Buckee explains, the data transmitted from this tower near the town […]

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Science for Humanity falters but hopes to reinvent itself

A charity set up to support development by acting as a broker between UK scientists, NGOs and developing world firms has failed to gain traction and is trying to refocus its mission by launching an online collaboration on global risk. Science for Humanity was created in 2008 with the aim of letting scientists showcase technologies — in fields such as medicine, agriculture, energy, water supply and sanitation — […]

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