Features

  DPA A mobile game, of all things, is providing dementia researchers with huge amounts of data. Called Sea Hero Quest, it’s helping them understand how our brains navigate space and is being used to create a benchmark for early detection of dementia, one of the first symptoms of which is the loss of navigational skills. Participants in the project ...

  DPA Derek Ndinteh may be sitting in a windowless tiny office at one of South Africa’s less-well-known universities writing out an application for research funding, but this brilliant 40-year-old from Cameroon is confident. “I will be the first black Nobel laureate in chemistry,” says the researcher at the University of Johannesburg – “UJ” to its students. The role of ...

  Veitshoechheim / DPA “Before I came here I was unemployed for quite a while,” says 26-year-old Anna-Lisa Imkeller, as she stands at a high desk in the workshop of the Farassat Foundation. Her table is covered with post-it notes, pens and papers, the model of a wind turbine stands on a shelf and the wall is covered with large ...

  Bochum / DPA Heavily tattoed and pierced, wearing harem trousers and a fitted top at work: to look at Marion Marschalek, you might guess she’s a drifter doing the South-East Asian youth hostels, not a star mind at one of Germany’s oldest cyber security firms. The 28-year-old Austrian is in fact much in demand as a malware expert. Ever ...

  Vilcabamba / DPA Death among the middle-aged is a rare surprise in the Ecuadorian town of Vilcabamba. “She was just 43. Brain tumour. Very few die that young here,” muses William Benítez as the coffin containing Rosa Torres is borne down the street to the cemetery. Benítez is there to vend ice cream to the sweating pallbearers. “Actually, 100 ...

  Kaiserslautern / DPA When Professor Sabine Hoffmann invites you to sit down, there’s a surprise in store: the individualized office chairs she’s helping to develop can ventilate you from below. At the push of a button, their little built-in fans can blow air on the back or bottom. Men in particular like this feature, she says, as it helps ...

  Tokyo / DPA Visitors landing in Japan often take a while to realize what they haven’t brought enough of in their luggage: presents. Gift-giving plays a huge role in Japan throughout the year, not just at New Year. At weddings and funerals, on holidays or as part of business, presents in the world’s third biggest economy are a courtesy ...

  Worpswede / DPA When a child first announces they want to be an artist, the parents are often aghast – “Why don’t you learn a profession first?” they say. And their scepticism is justified. The vast majority of artists cannot earn a living income from art and most need a more prosaic second job. Even in Germany, where modest ...

  Mexico City / DPA Many people think of archaeologists as people who excavate dry earth at scorched sites, or dust off relics with small paintbrushes under piercing sunlight, perhaps donning hats in the style of Indiana Jones. This is not the case with Pilar Luna’s team. Their gear consists of air tanks, wetsuits, diving fins and dive tables for ...

  Frankfurt / DPA There was a time when postal services were about gathering heavy sacks full of letters, painstakingly sorting the mail manually and delivering letters on heavy-duty bicycles. Not any more – with everything from drones and self-driving cars coming up, postal services are rushing into a robotic future. In some nations, today’s sorting offices are dominated by ...