Rosetta, Zika, and Retroviruses: Week in Review

This Week’s NOVA Next Feature

Viruses that infected our ancestors provided the genetic foundations for many of the traits that define us. NOVA Next contributor Carrie Arnold reports the story.

• Why do dogs eat poop? NEW video from NOVA’s Gross Science
• The Rosetta space probe plunged to its death on comet 67P this week.
• Zika has been confirmed to be transferrable through nonsexual contact for the first time.
• Micro-bursts of extreme temperature and pressure remove an entire step of the beer brewing process.
• The world’s largest single-dish radio telescope has begun testing.
• Five Botswanan lionesses grew manes and started acting like males.

What We’re Reading

• Some scientists are saying that “time moves as it does because humans are biologically, neurologically, philosophically hardwired to experience it that way.” [Wired]
• Humans are getting better at living together , not worse. [PRI’s The World]
• Scientists are inching closer to the ability to detect C.T.E . in those who are still living. [The New York Times]