This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
Decrepit neighborhoods have become a magnet for curious visitors, but is the practice as denigrating as some suggest? NOVA Next contributor Rachel Nuwer
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- “The artificial part of my body is beyond immortal—it’s improving with time.” ~ Hugh Herr , bionic innovator at MIT’s Media Lab.
- Scientists have discovered a way to make trees grow bigger and faster .
- Rare video captures sperm whale in the deep sea.
- Ancient asteroids may have concocted prebiotic molecules & delivered them to Earth.
- Math is elegant and powerful… but why? We’re exploring the question with the next #NOVAreads book: “Is God a Mathematician?” by Mario Livio. You’ll have a month to read it, and then we’ll discuss on Goodreads & Twitter. Plus, we’ll host a Reddit AMA with Dr. Livio himself.
- Astrophysicist Mario Livio argues that math not only describes and explains reality— but predicts it, too .
- NASA just received its first color image of the dwarf planet Pluto. Stay tuned: NOVA will be telling the whole New Horizons story this summer.
- Ever wanted someone’s poop pumped through a tube in your nose? Fecal transplants are surprisingly effective at curing some bacterial infections.
- You’d have to go back over 40 million years to find temperatures this hot.
- Apathy might be an unanticipated side-effect of taking Tylenol.
- How do you determine the sex of a fossilized dino? Measure the tail bones .
Did you miss "The Great Math Mystery" this week? Watch it streaming online here.
- Allergies may be unfortunate side-effects of our bodies’ defense against parasitic worms .
- A snake-shaped robot gave officials a look inside Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant . Examine how the bioinspired robot came to be.
- Clams can get leukemia —and the peculiar way this cancer spreads could teach scientists about marine disease.
- There could be liquid water on Mars , but it wouldn’t be useful for life.
