Bee gold: Honey as superfood
By Berly McCoy From pesticide detox to increased longevity, the benefits of the sweet stuff go well beyond simply nourishing the hardworking insects in the hive Read more
The curious case of shrinking genomes
By Alla Katsnelson Scientists are exploring why some creatures throw away bits of their DNA during development Read more
Events happening this week!
The psychology and politics of conspiracy theories
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 | 8:30am San Francisco | 11:30am New York | 4:30pm London
In the past year, conspiracy theories have had a big impact on politics and public health. What makes them so appealing? How can we disrupt their influence? Join us for a discussion with two experts — a social psychologist and a political theorist — to explore these issues and more.
Scientific knowledge for all
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 | 9:30am PDT | 12:30pm EST | 6:30pm CEST
In recognition of Open Access week, we invite you to tune in to three one-to-one conversations, exploring issues ranging from the societal — such as the need for scientific findings to inform sound policy responses to the pandemic and climate change — to the personal, through stories from the speakers’ working lives where unlocking knowledge helped guide individual decisions or spark an appreciation of the natural world.
From the archives
The New York City Board of Health has declared racism a public health crisis, reports Karen Zraick for the New York Times. Though similar resolutions have been made across the US, this declaration goes further by requesting that one of the nation’s largest health departments identify the steps needed for a racially just recovery from the pandemic. Learn more about how racism made communities of color more vulnerable to Covid-19 in our interview with public health expert David Williams.
Covid-19: Why race matters for health
VIDEO: The pandemic has highlighted the complex links between inequality, racism and disease risk in America. Harvard public health scholar David Williams explains. Watch now
If you’re a momma yellow warbler, one of the last things you’d want to come home to is the eggs of a parasitic cowbird in your nest. Communities of warblers have their own specific calls to warn of this intruder and they remember the warning call even a day later, Rachel Fritts reports for Science. To learn more about the amazing long-term memory of other birds — seed-storing chickadees — and how studying them sheds light on brain evolution, see our interview with biologist Vladimir Pravosudov.
Total recall: A brilliant memory helps chickadees survive
By Betsy Mason In winter, the birds must remember where they’ve hidden tens of thousands of seeds. Biologist Vladimir Pravosudov explains what this can teach us about how the brain evolves. Read more
What we’re reading
This little kidney
More than 90,000 Americans are stuck on the waiting list for a kidney transplant — but maybe it doesn’t need to be a human kidney they receive? For the New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin covers the recent news that surgeons have attached a kidney from a genetically altered pig to a human patient in a kind of short-term test run, and found that the kidney functioned. The news sparked a variety of responses, from condemnation to cautious optimism to excitement. With pig heart valves, skin and pancreas cells already in use in human medicine, are kidneys far off?
5G, explained
Watch any ad for a cell phone provider, and you’re bound to hear about its “5G network.” But what the heck is it? A new video by Scientific American gives you the lowdown on this mobile technology, the latest protocol for how devices connect to the internet. In less than six minutes, you’ll learn how several innovations allow 5G networks to transfer data much faster than existing networks and with far less lag. That not only allows folks to stream “Squid Game” to their phones but also could lead to an “internet of things” connecting all manner of sensors and devices to one another.
Photosynthesizing brains
For all the swimmers wishing they could hold their breath longer, this one’s for you. A research team modified tadpoles so that their brains got oxygen not from the water, as tadpoles normally do, but from photosynthesizing microorganisms, reports Abby Olena for the Scientist. The researchers injected algae or cyanobacteria into the tadpoles’ developing circulatory systems, which pumped the light-harvesting microbes throughout their bodies. Aiming light at the tadpoles kicked off oxygen-dependent activities in their brains even when they were swimming in oxygen-free water. Sources say it’s a tentative new step in a freewheeling area of research: changing cellular behavior by inserting foreign microbes.
Art & science
CREDIT: DESIGN BY PETER SAVILLE & JOY DIVISION / FACTORY RECORDS
On the radio In June 1979, a British rock band dropped its debut album. The cover was striking: all black with nothing but a stack of squiggly white lines in the center vaguely resembling a mountain range. The band was Joy Division. And the art for the now instantly recognizable Unknown Pleasures album was a visualization of data from the first known pulsar — the rapidly spinning remnant of a dead star.
Jen Christiansen delves into the image’s backstory at Scientific American. The graphic artwork, which depicts the varying radio intensity over 80 successive periods of the pulsar’s steady beat, has its origins as a figure in the 1970 PhD thesis of astronomer Harold Craft, writes Christiansen. And more recently, it has resurfaced as a mural near Manchester, England, as part of a campaign alerting the world to the dangers of climate change. The artist behind the latest iteration? None other than Peter Saville, the designer behind the album cover, who has reimagined the image to symbolize “the eternal silence of a dead planet.”
