This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
A simple yet apparently effective metamaterial could save vital buildings from earthquakes’ destructive waves. NOVA Next contributing editor Phil McKenna reports the story.
In other news:
- Very few neurology studies focus exclusively on hate. But the ones that do are helping scientists understand extremism —and how to stop it.
- Why there’s no HIV cure yet
- Cool things we learned about the making of North America
- Being a little overweight might be good for your health.
- Scientists may have found a biological compass that could shed light on our brains.
- Male koalas have a scent gland in the middle of their chest. More gross facts about koalas
- A global cyberwar is becoming more probable—and the stakes aren’t limited to the virtual world of computers.
- This mollusk’s protective armor is outfitted with tiny eyes made of rock .
- Super light, flexible diamond nanothread could create entirely new materials.
- A giant cauldron of magma simmering beneath Yellowstone is threatening to blow.
What We’re Reading
- How politics shaped general relativity [The New Yorker]
- The NIH has announced that it will retire all research chimpanzees . [Nature News]
- The next big thing in biomedicine could be video games . [The New Yorker]
- An electron is both everywhere and nowhere. But what about the human being that it builds ? [Nautilus Magazine]
- Neurologists believe they have identified a hypersensitive nerve system that triggers migraines. [Scientific American]
- Scientists have grown human vocal cords in the lab for the first time. [BuzzFeed]
Did you miss "Making North America: Human" this week? You can catch it streaming online.