Brain device could spot when you daydream at work

Thousands of workers are struggling with mental health issues

(Image credit: Menahem Kahaha/AFP/Getty Images)

A brainwave device could give office workers a jolt if they daydream during working hours, reported The Times. The productivity software can spot from a wearer’s brainwaves if they are daydreaming and, through a haptic scarf, jolt them back to work. “If done well, neurotechnology has extraordinary promise,” said Nita Farahany, a technology ethicist, but “if done poorly, it could become the most oppressive technology we have ever introduced on a wide scale across society”.

Zookeepers solve pregnant gibbon mystery

Zookeepers in Japan believe they have solved the mystery of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage, said CNN. Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, baffled everyone at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki last year when she gave birth despite having no male companionship. A DNA test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure and is thought to have impregnated her through a small hole in a steel plate between their enclosures.

Locals livid over pizza prominence

Residents in a Leicestershire town are up in arms as a ninth pizza takeaway opens in the area. The new arrival, Pizza GoGo, is within walking distance of a number of other fast food outlets providing pizza and locals in Coalville are fed up. “It’s ridiculous,” Ken Morgan, an engineer from Ravenstone, told Leicestershire Live, “you couldn’t force me to eat pizza even if you tried”. Lynne Tanner, 67, said: “It’s annoying because it’s all we seem to get here now.”

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.