Olympic Athletes Swim the Murky Seine, and Astronauts Are Stuck on the Space StationWe cover the science stories of the Olympics, concerns about artificial sweeteners and a new theory of how the pyramids were built in this week’s news roundup.By...
August 12, 20244 min readInvasive Joro Spiders Keep Their Cool Even When StressedCompared with other arachnids, invasive Joro spiders are calm, cool and collected under stress, a new study showsBy Stephanie PappasA Joro spider hangs out in a Georgia suburb....
Bill Kotsatos/Polaris/eyevine People like to position maths as cold, hard logic, quite distinct from creative pursuits. Actually, maths often involves a great deal of creativity. As mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya wrote, “It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a...
What to do when plague calls? Retreat to a country mansion and partyGiulia Parmigiani/Netflix The DecameronKathleen JordanNetflix The influential thinker and writer Douglas Rushkoff was once summoned to an audience with five Silicon Valley billionaires. As he recounts in Survival...
New U.N. Cybercrime Treaty Could Threaten Human RightsA recently adopted United Nations treaty could lead to invasive digital surveillance, human rights experts warnBy Kate Graham-Shaw NEW YORK CITY —The United Nations approved its first international cybercrime treaty yesterday. The effort...
Illustration of a tidal disruption eventMark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images Astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole eating a giant star in the biggest and brightest example of this powerful event ever seen. It could be the missing link that...
JN.1 spread widely despite many people being vaccinated and having previous covid-19 infectionsDebarchan Chatterjee/NurPhoto/Shutterstock One mutation may have been crucial to the covid-19 variant JN.1 spreading rapidly around the world last year, demonstrating how quickly the virus can adapt. “A...
A building’s design can influence its temperatureAlistair Scott/Getty Images Walls with a protruding zigzag pattern could stay up to 3°C (5.4°F) cooler than regular walls, without using any energy. This approach could reduce the energy used by cooling systems and...
Colds Bring Lots of Snot, But Just How Much? Science Is Strangely SilentSnot is one of the immune system’s efforts to ditch a virus, but how much we produce when sick is a slippery subjectBy Bethany BrookshireWhen sick, our noses...
When I was a mere lad, probably in middle school, I remember a friend telling me that the Apollo astronauts could see the Great Wall of China from the moon.If someone told me that now, I’d know almost instinctively that...
