Blessed are the (tiny) cheesemakers
By Ute Eberle Cheese is not just a tasty snack — it’s an ecosystem. And the fungi and bacteria within that ecosystem play a big part in shaping the flavor and texture of the final product. Read more
The road to low-carbon concrete
By M. Mitchell Waldrop For thousands of years, humanity has had a love affair with cement and concrete. But now, industry groups and researchers are seeking solutions to the huge amounts of carbon dioxide that cement-making generates. Read more
City birds are changing their tune
By Alejandro Portilla Navarro Several species of urban-dwelling birds have modified their songs in response to human-generated noise Read more
Registration now open
Beyond COP27: Who will pay for climate solutions?
Wednesday, December 7, 2022 | 9am PT | 12pm ET | 5pm GMT
FREE EVENT: Economic issues were front and center at the most recent global climate summit. Join Tobias Adrian of the International Monetary Fund and Shuang Liu of the World Resources Institute to take stock of the investments needed to prevent climate chaos.
From the archives
For the millions of Americans living with long Covid, here’s some good news: There are clinics that treat the condition. The bad news is that just because such clinics exist doesn’t mean they’re good at what they do, or easy to get to, writes Betsy Ladyzhets in a story with an interactive map at Science News. For more on this mysterious condition, its many and varied symptoms, and the researchers trying to figure out why it happens and how to treat it, read our story (and watch the embedded video).
How long will it take to understand long Covid?
By Marla Broadfoot Covid long-haulers experience a litany of symptoms, and researchers have proposed a variety of theories to explain them. It’s a morass to figure out, but the answers are important for the multitudes still suffering from an infection that happened to them months or even years ago. Read more
What we’re reading
Rebranding robusta
Of the two most popular species of coffee, arabica beans dominate the premium market. Robusta, with its intense, ashy taste, is generally considered second-class “garbage juice,” used primarily for instant grounds. But as climate change wreaks havoc on the growing conditions for arabica, robusta could step in: It’s a hardier plant and better at withstanding changes in temperature, among other things. For the Atlantic, Alina Simone follows the connoisseurs squeezing robusta onto specialty store shelves, the farmers experimenting with growing this crop and the marketing that calls the bean the “smoky scotch” of coffee.
Soccer’s Moneyball moment
In World Cup matches starting this week, an unseen contingent will command much of the game. Mathematicians, physicists and other data whizzes have a growing presence at football (aka soccer) clubs and teams, writes David Adam for Nature. The number crunchers’ models and analytics decipher the reams of data collected by cameras and are shaping what unfolds on the field — fewer shots from a distance, for example, or fewer sideways passes. Artificial intelligence is even being used to predict the moves of players who don’t have the ball — a tricky task since cameras often don’t capture that action. As one analyst put it, “I think the data footprints are all over the sport now and there’s no going back.”
A tangled tale
In the 1990s, a handful of scientists proposed the idea of a “wood-wide web” — a cute term for the idea that individual trees in a forest are linked by underground fungal filaments, allowing the trees to share nutrients, communicate and even nurture one another and their young-uns. It’s a grand idea, one that’s captured the public imagination and been featured in TV shows, movies and books. But some scientists are now pushing back, Gabriel Popkin writes for the New York Times. Have flaws in experimental procedures, a decades-long game of academic telephone, and the gradual loss of caveats and nuances overhyped this web?
Art & science
CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY DEBORAH MARCERO FROM THE BOY WHOSE HEAD WAS FILLED WITH STARS,WRITTEN BY ISABELLE MARINOV (ENCHANTED LION BOOKS, 2021)
Cosmic dreams
The world entered 1920 thinking that the universe ended at the limits of the Milky Way Galaxy. By the decade’s end, most astronomers realized that the Milky Way was in fact a sliver of what the universe had to offer — a transformation brought about in part by Edwin Hubble.
The namesake for one of the most famous telescopes in the world, Hubble was in his early 30s when he made observations confirming the existence of galaxies outside our own. His later research revealed that galaxies were moving apart at a rate proportional to the distance separating them — work that was interpreted as evidence for an expanding universe, a possibility suggested by the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Hubble’s findings were aided by the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer working in the early 1900s, and observations by Milton Humason, who was an observatory construction worker, janitor and then night manager before becoming an astronomer and collaborator of Hubble’s.
But even with this success so early in life, Hubble started his astronomy career later than he had wanted. At his father’s insistence, Hubble deferred his dreams of studying the stars, even though he had been fascinated by space as a kid. Those childhood aspirations — and what they eventually offered to science — are the subject of The Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars, a children’s book by author Isabelle Marinov and artist Deborah Marcero. The expansive illustrations, including the one shown above, guide readers though Hubble’s earliest years and into adulthood working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California — where the astronomer first showed that our collective home is ever-growing. For more of Marcero’s work, check out her Instagram and visit Maria Popova’s the Marginalian for more on Hubble.
