Imagine you’re walking your dog. It interacts with the world around you—sniffing some things, relieving itself on others. You walk down the Embarcadero in San Francisco on a bright sunny day, and you see the Ferry Building in the distance as you look out into the bay. Your dog turns to you, looks you in…
Biofuels are contributing to environmental harm Dave Reede/Alamy It’s obvious, isn’t it. Plants turn sunlight into food – stored energy – so if we turn that food into fuels, we should get sustainable biofuels with zero carbon emissions, right? Wrong, utterly wrong. The growth in biofuels is, in fact, increasing emissions, and also hurting both…
Some schools require students to leave their phones in lockers all day Robin Utrecht/Shutterstock Many people are concerned about the negative consequences of too much screen time, particularly if phone use at school distracts students and affects their learning. But a study suggests banning them from schools makes some students lonelier, at least initially. “If…
Can you undo a spinning top? Shutterstock Imagine spinning a top and then letting it come to rest. Is there a way for you to spin the top again so it ends up in the exact position it started, as if you had never spun it at all? Surprisingly, yes, say mathematicians who have discovered…
Simone Rotella People transgress. They get punished. They start cooperating. This basic intuition that people are rational, and so respond to punishment by changing their behaviour, lies at the heart of Western legal systems, economic theories of crime and evolutionary theories of cooperation. The only problem is that decades of research suggest that punishment doesn’t…
Grass by Sheri S. Tepper I have a penchant for old sci-fi with trashy covers so terrible they are brilliant. My dream is that someone creates a wallpaper of them so I can use it to paper my downstairs bathroom. In the meantime, I recently came across a book in a charity shop I ended…
Josie Ford Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Our expiry date Bad news, everyone: our cards are marked. The human species will go extinct by the year 2339, so we have just a…
“A government might start using its digital ID in more invasive ways than originally promised…” da-kuk/Getty Images The first ID card I ever had was the flimsy piece of laminated paper that made up my driver’s license. In the US, a driver’s license includes a photo, biometric information (eye colour, height, etc.) and birthdate. This…
Did these cool creatures pull off the ultimate power play by domesticating themselves? Eman Kazemi/Alamy Cat Tales: A historyJerry D. Moore, Thames & Hudson Over the course of a weekend, I once saw one of my family’s cats, a Byronic individual named Solomon, maul my sister under the guise of play, throw up on my bedsheets…
Comparing Our Favorite Alexa Speakers Other Alexa (or Alexa-Compatible) Speakers There are a lot of Echo devices out there, and some third-party speakers that are Amazon Alexa–compatible. Here’s every Alexa smart speaker we’ve tried and what we thought of it. Amazon Echo Pop for $40: The Echo Pop is a perfectly fine little speaker, and…