Hands up: Who thought it was cool that Captain James T. Kirk (aka Canadian actor William Shatner) got to go into space for real at the age of 90—and, at the same time, thought the flight itself was a ghastly PR exercise for Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space business?
There was a time when the internet was seen as an unequivocal force for social good. It propelled progressive social movements from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring; it set information free and flew the flag of democracy worldwide. But today, democracy is in retreat and the internet’s role as driver is palpably clear. From fake news bots to misinformation to conspiracy theories, social media has commandeered mindsets, evoking the sense of a dark force that must be countered by authoritarian, top-down controls.
After a three-year hiatus, scientists in the U.S. have just turned on detectors capable of measuring gravitational waves – tiny ripples in space itself that travel through the universe.
Until very recently, if you wanted to know more about a controversial scientific topic – stem cell research, the safety of nuclear energy, climate change – you probably did a Google search. Presented with multiple sources, you chose what to read, selecting which sites or authorities to trust.
Opioid drugs such as morphine and fentanyl are like the two-faced Roman god Janus: The kindly face delivers pain relief to millions of sufferers, while the grim face drives an opioid abuse and overdose crisis that claimed nearly 70,000 lives in the U.S. in 2020 alone.
One of the most common stereotypes about the human past is that men did the hunting while women did the gathering. That gendered division of labor, the story goes, would have provided the meat and plant foods people needed to survive.
Have you ever had a nasty infection that just won’t seem to go away? Or a runny nose that keeps coming back? You may have been dealing with a bacterium that is tolerant of, though not yet resistant to, antibiotics.