Working Memory, Urban Sidewalk & Mother Tongue

The debate over how working memory works

Scientists present dueling theories in the high-stakes quest to understand how we hold and juggle multiple pieces of information in mind.

What Ends Up On the Sidewalk

Sidewalks are a last shred of safe public space. No wonder we’re fighting over them.

Mother tongue versus father tongue—a new study reconciles the two hypotheses

The mother tongue hypothesis suggests that language usage follows matrilineal inheritance. The father tongue hypothesis holds that paternal lines dominate the local language in an already populated region, which was proposed based on other genetic and anthropological research.

Ready For A Linguistic Controversy? Say ‘Mmhmm’

You got it! Mmhmm is a small word that’s often used unconsciously. But it can actually tell us a lot about language, bias and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

This Week In China Tech: Uncensored Games From China, Hong Kong Trade On The Blockchain, And More

China’s technology industry with Tencent unveiling their competitor to gaming marketplace Steam, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announcing a country-wide trade finance platform built on the blockchain and Alibaba announcing a fivefold increase in the efficiency of digitizing the physical world.