This Week’s NOVA Next Feature Article
To feed a world of more than 9 billion, we may need to rewrite the book of agriculture using perennials. NOVA Next contributor Brooke Borel reports on how modifying crops like wheat could help boost yields by extending the growing season.
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- Think the Higgs was the end of it? Think again .
- People with A.D.H.D. “get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world.”
- A person’s self-control wears down at the day wears on, increasing the likelihood of lying , cheating, or fraud.
- Robots disguised as penguins could help improve behavioral research.
- Public media lost one of the greats this week. We were honored to work with Tom Magliozzi as he took us on a tour of cutting-edge automotive technologies in a way that no one else could in “Car of the Future.”
- Bill Gates says we can eradicate malaria within a generation. Here’s one way we could stop malaria’s spread .
- The hermit thrush prefers to sing in harmonic series , a fundamental component of human music.
Did you miss "Bigger Than T. rex" this week? Watch it streaming online.
- A second form of the chikungunya virus has appeared in Brazil. Meanwhile, a vaccine for the original strain has passed a phase 1 clinical trial.
- What happens to the brain when it’s physically separated from the world?
- When it comes to protons, even the simplest questions —How big is it? What is its shape?—turn out to have complicated answers.
- If you could temporarily fix your vision by reshaping your eyeballs , would you do it?
- Killer whales can learn to “ speak dolphin .”
- Sideline robot trainers are helping athletic trainers spot football concussions . Learn about the dangers of a concussion-related brain disease .
- Humans have now witnessed the birth of a solar system in greater detail than ever before.
- Bats engage in acoustic warfare with one another.