Annalee Newitz

No, Female Hurricanes Are Not Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes

A group of marketing researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign decided to tackle the problem of gender bias by analyzing a peculiar statistical anomaly: hurricanes with female names tend to be more deadly than ones with male names. And that was only the first thing they did wrong. Kiju Jung and colleagues published the…

Hugh Howey Talks About the Process of Writing His New Novel, Sand

We have an exclusive video interview of Hugh Howey (Wool) and his UK editor, Jack Fogg, discussing Howey’s new novel Sand. It’s a fascinating look at the creative process of one of the most popular science fiction authors today.

Republicans Claim Only “Scientists” Can Understand Climate Change

“I’m not a scientist,” Republican John Boener told reporters last week, to explain why he couldn’t discuss climate change. This seems to be a new rhetorical strategy deployed by Republicans who don’t want to comment on the fact that their stance on the environment is currently more reactionary than the Pentagon’s. Atmospheric scientist Donald Wuebbles,…

The U.S. military is funding research into developing brain implants that will regulate human emotions. The idea is to locate and “stop” feelings experienced by soldiers and veterans, including depression and fear. What could go wrong?

She Walked Inside the Tree Trunk, and Found Herself in a Maze

What had seemed like a bunch of fallen logs from the outside slowly resolved itself into a series of tunnels that seemed lined with the castoff boards from a thousand cheap construction projects. The further she walked, the more confusing the passages became. At last she came to a crossroads. This is the work of…

From Metaphysics to Teen Wolf Meta: The Evolution of a Word

If you follow genre television, internet fandom, or literary criticism, you’ve probably heard the word “meta” used to describe everything from a narrative form, to intensive analysis of character backstories in Harry Potter. How did this Greek prefix meaning “beyond” come to mean so much to so many of us? You can probably blame it…

Inside a Corrupt Stem Cell Research Lab

The well-funded lab of stem cell researcher Piero Anversa has come under fire following the retraction of one of their papers on the regenerative properties of stem cells. Now, more of their research is under investigation. Over at Retraction Watch, one former lab worker speaks out about the atmosphere of “fear” and “secrecy” there. Above…

In an Experimental Park, a Wild Species Comes Back from Extinction

The scimitar-horned oryx has become a symbol of how humans can destroy animal populations with frightening rapidity. Its massive wild population in Africa crashed into extinction a few decades ago. But now, in an ecological experiment, scientists have brought the oryx back to the wilderness. Photo by Jori Lewis Over at NOVA, Jori Lewis writes…

This Farmer Is Trying to Save Chickens “Rejected” By Big Poultry

Frank Reese is a farmer in Kansas who raises breeds of chicken that are dying out, despite their hardiness and tastiness — because they’re of no interest to the poultry industry. But he says that we’re going to need these breeds in the future, partly because they may be able to cope better with climate…

Scientists Tackle the “Faceplanting” Phenomenon

Admit it — you’ve watched those videos where people crash into something and then faceplant into the ground. It turns out that scientists have been watching them too. Here’s what they’ve discovered. Over at BoingBoing, Maggie Koerth-Baker has a hilariously awesome essay about the history of faceplant studies, and the first scientific paper to be…

Two Ways of Dealing with the Apocalypse

There are so many ways the world could end, even in the next year, that it’s impossible not to fantasize about some of them, some of the time. The question is, what do you do with these apocalyptic thoughts? It seems to me there are two basic choices. You can decide that the apocalypse is…

Do You Feel Like You’re Not Sleeping, Even When You Are?

Pseudoinsomnia is a sleep disorder, even though people who suffer from it appear to have perfectly normal sleep patterns. When pseudoinsomnicacs fall asleep every night, they feel as if they are lying awake, anxiously trying to get some rest. But they’re not imagining things. They really do have an unusual form of insomnia. In last…

Please, please crowdfund this animated movie. It’s called Giant Sloth, and it’s got Paul Giamatti as a curator at a science museum that gets privatized, who starts hallucinating when he has a really bad day. It sounds kind of like Night at the Museum crossed with Eraserhead. Find out more on Kickstarter.

At Last We Have a Technology That Can Stop Volcanoes

It may look bulky, and it may block out the light sometimes, but the magma accumulators saved our civilization. Plus, they turned every eruption into a source of energy to power our factories. That’s what finally defeated the anti-geoengineering lobby and ushered in the modern age. This incredible illustration is by Juan Carlos Barquet, a…

10 Books That Could Change the Way You Understand Modern Cities

We have just entered the Urban Age, when the majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Most of us may live in the metropolis, but these miracles of engineering and cultural productivity are almost impossible to understand. These ten books will help you untangle the mysteries of today’s city life. 1. The Death and…

Did Friendship Help Our Ancestors Evolve?

Most people understand how selfishness and competition drive evolution. But if that’s the case, why do we make friends at all? This video essay from New Scientist’s MacGregor Campbell offers a quick and informative answer to that question. First of all, humans aren’t the only animals that form friendships, so scientists have been able to…

Why Everyone Is Obsessed With This Academic Book on Economics

Sometimes a relatively dense academic book breaks out of the Ivory Tower and takes the world by storm. Such is the case with French economics professor Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Here’s one reason why the book is capturing people’s imaginations — and fueling speculation about our global future. In a recent review…

What Genre Movie Made You Leave the Theater or Shut Off the TV?

There are a lot of possible reasons why you have to stop watching a movie part of the way through. Sometimes it’s just terrible, but other times it’s too scary or too sad — or it’s just undefinably evil. What science fiction, fantasy or horror movie made you stop watching? Please include pictures, video, or…

Paolo Bacigalupi’s Next Novel Will Focus on the Future of Water

In novels like Windup Girl and Shipbreaker, Paolo Bacigalupi popularized the idea of hard science fiction that deals with the environment. And now he’s got a new novel coming out, The Water Knife, that he says will deal with how cities prepare for impending water shortages. Photo: T. Tissot In a terrific interview with Jake…

The Giant Insect Robot Had a Hidden Stinger

The machine operators called them “gas harvesters,” as if they were scything their way through sheafs of sweet-smelling grass. But where they went, grass wouldn’t be growing for a long time. In went the toxins and out came the fuels. We called them poison injectors. Wendy Yoon is a student at the Art Center College…