How to build better ice towers for drinking water and irrigation

There’s a better way to build a glacier. During winter in India’s mountainous Ladakh region, some farmers use pipes and sprinklers to construct building-sized cones of ice. These towering, humanmade…

Ed Yong’s ‘An Immense World’ reveals how animals perceive the world

An Immense WorldEd YongRandom House, $30 Emerald jewel wasps know what cockroach brains feel like. This comes in handy when a female wasp needs to turn a cockroach into an…

The idea that many people grow following trauma may be a myth

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger,” 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote. Variations of that aphorism abound in literary, spiritual and, more recently, psychological texts. That…

Here’s how sea anemones launch their venomous stingers

A new look at the starlet sea anemone’s stinger gets right to the point.  Live-animal images and 3-D computer reconstructions have revealed the complex architecture of the tiny creature’s needlelike…

Here’s how sea anemones launch their venomous stingers

A new look at the starlet sea anemone’s stinger gets right to the point.  Live-animal images and 3-D computer reconstructions have revealed the complex architecture of the tiny creature’s needlelike…

Aliens could send quantum messages to Earth, calculations suggest

An intelligent alien civilization could beam quantum messages to Earth. Particles of light, or photons, could be transmitted over vast, interstellar distances without losing their quantum nature, researchers report June…

Aliens could send quantum messages to Earth, calculations suggest

An intelligent alien civilization could beam quantum messages to Earth. Particles of light, or photons, could be transmitted over vast, interstellar distances without losing their quantum nature, researchers report June…

How scientists are shifting their search for links between diet and dementia

The internet is rife with advice for keeping the brain sharp as we age, and much of it is focused on the foods we eat. Headlines promise that oatmeal will…

How scientists are shifting their search for links between diet and dementia

The internet is rife with advice for keeping the brain sharp as we age, and much of it is focused on the foods we eat. Headlines promise that oatmeal will…

Feathers may have helped dinosaurs survive the Triassic mass extinction

Widespread volcanic eruptions around 202 million years ago had a profound effect on Earth’s climate, triggering a mass extinction event that killed off three-fourths of the planet’s species, including many…