This Week’s NOVA Next Feature Article
There haven’t been any coral snakes in the North Carolinian Sandhills for 50 years. And yet, the scarlet kingsnakes there are looking more and more like them. It’s a mysterious strategy, but somehow it works. NOVA’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow Eleanor Nelsen reports the story.
In other news from NOVA and around the web:
- Why the largest ever Ebola outbreak is not a global threat .
- 20 million-year-old grasshopper trapped in amber has been named after Sir David Attenborough .
- Several cities are undergoing aggressive efforts to submit all new rape kits for DNA testing.
- Forget buildings and monuments. In hundreds of millions of years, we’ll be known by our tunnels .
- Measure the speed of light at home using only chocolate and a microwave .
- The seas of Saturn’s moon Enceladus are blasting into space . And below the austere and veiny surface is an ocean up to six miles deep .
- SETI’s telescope array could be in danger from wildfires .
- The human lifespan is increasing by five hours a day, every day. But how much life is enough?
- Lake Erie’s toxic algae bloom , seen from space.
Did you miss "Australia’s First 4 Billion Years: Monsters" this week? Watch it streaming online until September 3.
- Listen in on other people’s conversations just by filming the subtle movements of nearby objects .
- What if you could generate useable biofuels that didn’t use arable land, didn’t rely on foodstuffs, and that also cost very little ?
- The dinosaur stampede debate (which we reported on last year) continues. Listen to the story , then zoom in and examine a hi-res image of the fossil bed.
- Rosetta is now the first satellite to ever begin orbiting a comet .
- “I didn’t even think about whether I’d be the first African-American woman in space … I just wanted to go into space.”
- Discover how entire ant colonies have collective personalities that vary depending on geography. Hint: Northern colonies are the Vikings of the ant world .
- Eleven billion dollars later, high-speed rail is still inching along. But does Elon Musk’s hyperloop hold any promise?
- With the help of Hubble, researchers have spotted a “zombie star” lurking in deep space .
- Are tears of joy different from tears of grief? Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher zoomed in to find out .