Rain? Or shine? Why do the apps get it wrong so often? Rob Watkins/Alamy If you hung out laundry, visited a beach or fired up the barbecue this week, you will almost certainly have consulted a weather app first. And you might not have been entirely happy with the results. Which raises the question: why…
The New Scientist Book Club has been reading Circular Motion by Alex Foster The New Scientist Book Club made a jump backwards through time for our latest read, Alex Foster’s Circular Motion, moving from the millennia-ahead future of Adam Roberts’s Lake of Darkness to a world that doesn’t feel so very far from our own.…
Ursula K. Le Guin in 2005 Dan Tuffs/Getty Images When I’m asked by a Le Guin neophyte where to start, I rarely recommend The Dispossessed. I wouldn’t urge a stranger to leap into the deep end of a pool. Though the novel delicately explores matters of the heart, it is heady – in the sense…
The Dispossessed takes place on the twin worlds of Anarres and Urras Naeblys/Alamy There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared; an adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it…
The sinuses become inflamed in people with chronic sinusitis Science Photo Library/Alamy Surgery is typically a last resort for people with a chronically blocked or runny nose. But in some cases, it may actually work better than the antibiotics that are routinely prescribed to treat the condition. Chronic sinusitis affects about 9 per cent of…
Access to social media will be controlled in Australia Anna Barclay/Getty Images In just a few months, the online world of Australian teenagers will be turned on its head as the federal government’s ban on social media for under-16s comes into effect. But with the December deadline looming, children and their parents still have no…
Someone’s cervical cancer risk could be gauged non-invasively by collecting and analysing samples of their urine SolStock/Getty Images Urine tests seem to detect strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that are particularly associated with cervical cancer with the same level of accuracy as vaginal swabs that people carry out themselves. Cervical cancer screening has historically…
A fetus’s immune cells are affected by the hormones produced by the mother PeopleImages.com – #2323955 Stress during pregnancy, perhaps around the 6-to-8-month mark especially, may prime certain immune cells in a fetus’s skin to overreact, leading to eczema. Immune cells called mast cells in the skin release histamine and other chemicals that trigger redness,…
John Glenn during the fiery re-entry NASA/Andy Saunders ON 20 February 1962, NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, but there were signs of trouble. As Glenn’s Friendship 7 spacecraft returned from its historic flight, a warning light indicated its heat shield had unlatched, risking complete incineration. This image (above) captures…
Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images The Story of CO2 Is the Story of EverythingPeter Brannen (Allen Lane) Carbon dioxide consumes our thoughts – and rightly so. Its emission from power plants, car exhausts and the burning of natural habitats is making our world warmer and warmer – a fact seriously exercising the minds of politicians…