The Book Club has been reading Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images The New Scientist Book Club moved from the dystopian near-future imagined by Grace Chan in Every Version of You in November to the utopian far-future imagined by Iain M. Banks in The Player of Games for our…
Annie Bot is literally programmed to please her owner Doug Leon Steele/Millennium Images, UK Not being a sex robot myself, I had to take an imaginative leap to write from the perspective of Annie in my novel Annie Bot. Because the book is written in the third person, not the first, Annie isn’t a narrator…
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for the best science fiction novel of the year “Come to bed, Mouse. I know how to cheer you up,” he says. “I’m not brooding,” Annie says. “You sure?” Advertisement “Fairly sure.” She is fresh from her shower, rubbing lotion into her…
Blood at a crime scene that contained a Y chromosome led to a rare discovery Shutterstock/PeopleImages The forensic examination of a murder victim has revealed that she had chimerism – meaning her body contained cells that were genetically distinct, as if they came from two different individuals. In this case, the unidentified woman had varying proportions of male…
3rd-century baths and latrine block at Vindolanda, the Roman fort close to Hadrian’s Wall in the UK Vindolanda Trust Despite their reputation for advanced sanitation, ancient Romans at a major fort in northern England were probably suffering from a range of digestive ailments caused by parasites. The fort of Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall and occupied…
A composite image of the dust belt around Fomalhaut (obscured in the middle). In the inset, dust cloud cs1, imaged in 2012, is pictured with dust cloud cs2, imaged in 2023 NASA, ESA, Paul Kalas/UC Berkeley Around the nearby star Fomalhaut, asteroids are smashing into each other in a series of cosmic cataclysms, creating huge…
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado Matthew Jonas/MediaNews Group/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images The Trump administration’s decision to close a world-leading research centre for atmospheric science is a blow to weather forecasting and climate modelling that could leave humanity more exposed to the impacts of global warming. In a statement to…
Here’s another reason to fight for a window seat: it may help regulate your blood sugar levels Anton Dios/Shutterstock Many of us sit by a window to boost our mood, but exposure to natural light during the day also seems to improve blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes. Our cells and tissues…
An artist’s impression of PSR J2322-2650b NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Astronomers have found what appears to be one of the strangest known worlds in the universe. It orbits a type of rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar – this in itself is unusual, but it is far from the weirdest thing about…
Chronic fatigue syndrome doesn’t have a single cause, but the role of genetics is starting to come to light anusorn nakdee/Getty Images We’re starting to get a handle on the role that genetics plays in the onset of chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). According to the largest study of its kind to date,…