Instructure, the company behind the widely used Canvas learning platform, has disclosed that it recently suffered a cybersecurity incident and is now investigating its impact.
The U.S.-based education technology company is best known for developing Canvas, a widely used learning management system that helps schools, universities, and organizations manage coursework, assignments, and online learning.
“Instructure recently experienced a cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor. We are actively investigating this incident with the help of outside forensics experts,” reads a statement from Steve Proud, Chief Security Officer.
Relax as we explore the daunting question of whether humanity will ever journey beyond the stars. From the vast distances of space to the limits of technology, this soothing story unpacks the challenges (and the quiet hope) of interstellar travel.
Where are you watching from, and what time is it there? I’d love to hear in the comments—it’s always wonderful to see how far and wide this sleepy little community reaches.
If this helped you relax or stirred your sense of wonder, feel free to like the video and subscribe for more peaceful science stories to fall asleep to.
Wishing you a quiet night, wherever in the cosmos you may be.
Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_… How your biology and environment make your decisions for you, according to Dr. Robert Sapolsky.
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Robert Sapolsky, PhD is an author, researcher, and professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In this interview with Big Think’s Editor-in-Chief, Robert Chapman Smith, Sapolsky discusses the content of his most recent book, “Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will.”
Being held as a child, growing up in a collectivist culture, or experiencing any sort of brain trauma – among hundreds of other things – can shape your internal biases and ultimately influence the decisions you make. This, explains Sapolsky, means that free will is not – and never has been – real. Even physiological factors like hunger can discreetly influence decision making, as discovered in a study that found judges were more likely to grant parole after they had eaten.
This insight is key for interpreting human behavior, helping not only scientists but those who aim to evolve education systems, mental health research, and even policy making.
The rapidly declining marriage and fertility rates across developed East Asian societies strain pension and health care systems, threaten economic growth, and reshape entire societies. To tackle this issue, governments in Japan and across East Asia have invested heavily in pronatalist measures, but often with limited success. For instance, Japan’s government has repeatedly expanded childcare subsidies and parental leave provisions, yet the total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.20 in 2024.
A common narrative in media commentary, policy circles, and even within families is that women are “too educated” or “too career-focused” to marry and have children. However, the exact causal relationship between women’s education level and family formation is not well understood.
To fill this knowledge gap, a team of researchers from Japan and Singapore, led by Associate Professor Rong Fu from the Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University, Japan, used a novel quasi-experimental approach to understand the relationship between education, fertility, and marriage in Japan.
Aggregated AI represents a fundamental rezoning of this digital landscape. It is the architectural foundation of the ultimate digital 15-minute city.
Modern urban planners are increasingly rallying around a transformational concept known as the “15-minute city.” The philosophy is simple but profound: a neighborhood should be designed so that everything a resident needs for daily life—work, groceries, healthcare, education, and leisure—is accessible within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. It is a direct rejection of the sprawling, car-centric metropolis that forces people to spend large fractions of their lives commuting from one isolated zone to another.
When you look at the architecture of the modern internet, it becomes painfully obvious that we are living in the digital equivalent of urban sprawl.
For the past two decades, we have built a digital environment defined by vast distances and fragmented zones. We have distinct destinations for every conceivable task. You commute to one platform to analyze data, travel to another to manage client relationships, drive over to a different interface to write code, and navigate a maze of disparate chat windows to communicate. The modern knowledge worker spends an inordinate amount of their day stuck in digital traffic, constantly context-switching, moving data between incompatible silos, and navigating a sprawling ecosystem that was built for the benefit of the platforms, not the people who inhabit them.
A new study shows that even the smartest high schoolers rely on slow, deliberate thought to solve logic puzzles. Fast and accurate psychological intuition takes years of education to fully develop.
While doing research during the works of the SRI 4th World Congress, I am trying to deepen my knowledge of the immense work done by Gerard K. O’Neill and his Space Studies Institute (SSI) during the second half of the past century.
Gerry took the work where Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, von Braun, and others had left it, on the great theme of rotating habitats in free space. And more, the SSI, founded by him, has developed an incredible amount of very high-profile studies about space manufacturing [1], covering many aspects of living in free-space habitats. Not only scientific and technical issues. According to the O’Neill teachings—as his main references, like Krafft Ehricke and others, had done—human requirements, attention to life and health protection, human rights, and social needs informed all of the developed studies and conceptual design.
Great outreachers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Stanley Kubrick were ready to follow O’Neill and promote his concepts in their artworks and in their interviews to TV and media magazines.
Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov was a Russian mathematician whose work influenced many branches of modern mathematics, especially harmonic analysis, probability, set theory, information theory, and number theory. A man of broad culture, with interests in technology, history, and education, he played
Daniel de Florian had already established himself as a theoretical physicist—leading a group at CERN that contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson—when he had an idea: introducing physics into high schools using virtual reality (VR). He believed that younger generations were drawn to less traditional ways of accessing science and that VR might be worth a try. As director of the Institute of Physical Sciences at the National University of General San Martín, located on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis of Buenos Aires in Argentina, he had the resources to pursue the idea.
In 2024, de Florian began developing a combination of science, gaming, and immersive technology to create a VR-boosted version of high school physics courses. With funding from an international bank, he conducted the first pilot tests in 2025. In the VR program, students could manipulate atoms, create molecules, and solve challenges such as protecting nature on a fictional planet under various physical threats.
De Florian told Physics Magazine about his experience developing this unconventional educational tool.
