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 report the story .
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 .