Like rolling into a gas station during a road trip, whale sharks use oil and gas rigs as a pit stop during their migrations of thousands of kilometers across the oceans. The human-made structures attract marine life — including the sharks’ favorite snack: plankton. But experts worry that this lure could put the endangered behemoths…
The tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans has a brain just about the width of a human hair. Yet this animal’s itty-bitty organ coordinates and computes complex movements as the worm forages for food. “When I look at [C. elegans] and consider its brain, I’m really struck by the profound elegance and efficiency,” says Daniela Rus, a…
The older he gets, the more Bill Gates is surprised by what the world dishes up. Take billionaires. There are many now from the tech industry, quite a few with politics that skew forcefully right. “I always thought of Silicon Valley as being left of center,” Mr. Gates said. “The fact that now there is…
Israeli settlers are pushing ahead with a largely unnoticed de facto annexation of large areas of rural land in the occupied West Bank that has already seen the almost total displacement of Bedouin in large areas. While settler activity, including violence, has long been well-documented in the section of the West Bank designated by the…
Growing up, Tina Shingler didn’t touch her hair like other girls touched theirs. She didn’t preen, stroke or comb – though sometimes she hid pens and cigarettes in it. “I had no respect for it, because no one else had any,” she says. As a “Barnardo’s child”, Shingler’s hair presented a challenge to her white…
The Italian founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, who has been a vocal critic of Italy’s alleged complicity in abuses suffered by migrants in Libya, has revealed WhatsApp informed him his mobile phone was targeted by military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based company Paragon Solutions. Luca Casarini, an activist whose organisation is estimated to…