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 reports on slum tourism.
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.