This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
By studying different states of awareness, we’re narrowing in on what it means to be conscious. NOVA Next contributor Moheb Costandi
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- ISIS hasn’t destroyed ancient Palmyra ruins —yet.
- Scientists have traced a cancer-caused chemical in drinking water back to the drug methadone . Here’s how low concentrations of pharmaceutical compounds enter our drinking water every day.
- Astronomers are scanning stars and galaxies for evidence of hypothetical alien megastructures called Dyson spheres.
- Starting today, you can explore NOVA Labs lessons on Khan Academy !
- An ultracold experiment could solve one of physics’s biggest contradictions .
- A robot prototype that can perform brain surgery on a fruit fly outperformed even grad students.
- What can herpes do to your brain ?
- Here’s why the Pentagon keeps a stash of anthrax on hand.
- It’s possible to “unlearn” racial biases during sleep.
- A top medical school is looking to humanize medicine by adding English courses to its requirements.
Did you miss "First Man on the Moon" last night? You can watch it streaming online here.
- Did you miss NOVA Education ‘s webinar on evolution denialism? Watch it on YouTube here .
- Scientists have discovered a way to make potentially any fruit bigger .
- The U.S. is now in the process of developing guidelines for human genome-editing .
- A rare bird, the northern bald ibis, may become extinct with the capture of Palmyra by ISIS.
- Rhinos were once the largest animals that roamed the land. Here’s the story of how they conquered the world, and then lost it.

