This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
What will it take to prepare for future infectious disease outbreaks? To find out, we collaborated with The GroundTruth Project on a in-depth, multi-part investigation called Next Outbreak .
Our first feature tells the story of a handful of doctors who are attempting to revive Sierra Leone’s ailing healthcare system. NOVA Next contributor and GroundTruth correspondent Amy Maxmen reports .
In other news:
- Three ways pee could change the world
- Dr. Jane Goodall opens her heart to animals and tells us why we should, too.
- Educational games are becoming a powerful way to teach people about the science of climate change, vaccines, and evolution.
- Giraffes hum to each other throughout the night, and zookeepers never noticed.
- Researchers can control your mind using sound . The only hitch? You have to be a nematode.
- Why did Homo naledi go to such great lengths to bury its dead deep in a cave ?
- What’s it like to crawl through a pitch-dark, 7-inch-wide passage & find 1,500 bones? Rising Star scientists Hannah Morris and Becca Peixotto answered your questions in this Reddit AMA .
- How do we know that vaccines don’t cause autism , and what do we know about what does contribute to the condition?
What We’re Reading
- “It was impossible to know on that cloudless Arizona morning in January 2013 which fragments of Kim’s identity might survive, if any.” A dying young woman’s hope in cryonics —and a future [The New York Times]
- An algal protein could be transplanted into the human retina and used to restore sight to the blind. [Wired]
- “The apocalypse is still on, apparently,” writes science reporter Dennis Overbye . He’s talking about a collision of two black holes, 3.5 billion light-years away. [The New York Times]
- These guys built a scale model of the solar system across seven miles of Nevada desert. [Gizmodo]
- Scientists in the U.K. have asked for permission to edit the genomes of human embryos using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. [Nature News]
Catch an exclusive two-hour report chronicling a discovery that is rewriting the story of our family tree. The entire, two-hour NOVA & National Geographic special "Dawn of Humanity" is streaming online.