This Week’s NOVA Next Feature Article
By combining two techniques—CRISPR and gene drives—scientists are proposing a system that could change nearly any sexually reproducing species anywhere. NOVA Next editor Tim De Chant and NOVA’s 2014 AAAS Mass Media Fellow Eleanor Nelsen
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- In the 1890s, people didn’t worry about getting hit by a car while biking. Instead, doctors warned that female cyclists could develop a condition called “bicycle face.”
- Vineyard owners are using GPS to perfect their crop.
- What do you call the ghost of a ghost? If you’re a particle physicist, you might call it a “ sterile neutrino .”
- This is the first knot ever made out of a fluid.
- Contrary to popular belief, you use way more than 10% of your brain.
- Doctors Without Borders has called the current Ebola epidemic “out of control.” Deforestation , it turns out, could be the the cause.
- The Costa Concordia was successfully refloated on Monday. Find out how the Costa Concordia sunk and learn how marine engineering experts are improving safety with “Why Ships Sink,” streaming online .
- Honeybees are dying en masse. So Sam Droege is creating the first national inventory of indigenous wild bees, to see if they can save crops.
- Bring hands-on learning to the classroom with citizen science . NOVA Labs is a digital learning platform where “citizen scientists” can explore the Sun, energy, and more with the same data & tools that scientists use.
- The ancient Amazon once looked more like this savannah in modern day Bolivia than the rainforest we know today.
- Check out the world’s first commercial vertical farm .
- To gain a critical mass, we need to engage girls in STEM early on.
- Addiction is a learning disorder, argues one leading neuroscientist.
- Injecting a certain gene into heart muscle may turn normal heart cells into cells that start a heartbeat.
- A new material, called Vantablack, absorbs 99.965 percent of the visible light that hits it.
- This reptile is a skilled camouflager— even when blindfolded . Scientists think that means it can “see” through its skin.
- Scientists are using computer simulations to visualize dark matter . Meanwhile, a detector on the International Space Station is hunting for it, hundreds of miles above us.
- While you’re surfing the web, others are surfing the waves—and taking beautiful photos of them.
- Back in May, there was sex equality for lab mice. Now, labs themselves are implementing double-blind peer reviews to open more doors for women and minorities.
- Why should we care about abstract science? Theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin gave NOVA’s Secret Life of Scientists one gorgeous reason.
- The future of robotics might have just gotten squishier .
- New study says that the closer a nation’s genetic makeup is to Denmark, the happier the country is.
- Want greater happiness and fulfillment? Talk to strangers more often.
- African ground pangolins walk like dinosaurs. See for yourself .
- The Myers-Briggs test is no more scientifically valid than a BuzzFeed quiz.
- How big is Africa, really? This map says it all .
