Bees defend their hives against hornets with animal dung
Dec 12th 2020HONEYBEES IN ASIA have it rough. Unlike their cousins in North America, where bee-eating hornets have arrived only recently, Asian bees are relentlessly hunted by these giant wasps. Constant attacks have kicked Asian honeybee evolution into high gear and resulted in the insects developing several defensive tactics besides simply using their stings. First,…
A failed study shows a promising treatment for blindness
Dec 12th 2020IN THE TEXTBOOKS, science is simple. You come up with an idea, put it to the test, and then accept it or reject it depending on what your experiments reveal. In the real world, though, things are rarely that straightforward, as a paper just published in Science Translational Medicine shows. In it, a…
Mexicans lack access to credit
Dec 10th 2020FOR MOST Mexicans online shopping goes like this: people order their goods on Amazon or Mercado Libre, an Argentine ecommerce site that is Latin America’s biggest, but pay in cash at a convenience store. That is no surprise given only 37% of Mexicans over 15 years old have a bank account, according to…
Retail investors often learn the wrong lessons from success
Dec 10th 2020IT IS better to be lucky than good. This is the customary quip of poker players who owe success in a big pot to an improbable draw from the deck. In card games it is usually clear whom fortune has favoured. Not so in investing. The randomness of financial markets makes it hard…
The Thai authorities find shelter for homeless crustaceans
Dec 12th 2020AMID A SLUMP in tourism, one national park in Thailand has seen a dramatic rise in visitors. So numerous are the hermit crabs thronging the otherwise empty beaches of Koh Lanta that shells for them to live in have become a scarce commodity. The Thai government moved quickly to ease the housing shortage,…
The Japanese authorities understood covid-19 better than most
WHEN THE Diamond Princess, a cruise ship suffering from an outbreak of covid-19, arrived in Japan in February, it seemed like a stroke of bad luck. A small floating petri dish threatened to turn the Japanese archipelago into a big one. In retrospect, however, the early exposure taught the authorities lessons that have helped make…
The Arab spring at ten
IT IS AN anniversary no one is eager to mark. The numbers boggle the mind: half a million people dead; another 16m displaced from states no longer recognisable. There are the individual stories too, of dreams dashed and hopes shattered. One former activist, who long since gave up on the politics of his native Egypt,…
The Israel-Morocco peace deal is roiling Western Sahara
Dec 16th 2020ISRAEL’S FORMAL ties with the Arab world now extend from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the east to Morocco in the west. On December 10th President Donald Trump announced the latest breakthrough in his diplomatic push on behalf of the Jewish state. Morocco, the Arab world’s oldest monarchy, will become the fourth…
Harry Potter actress reveals newborn baby has Covid-19
Jessie Cave, star in the Harry Potter film franchise, has disclosed her newborn baby has tested positive for the novel COVID-19. The thespian, best known for starring as Lavender Brown in the film versions of the popular books, welcomed in October Tenn (a baby boy) after a “distressing” delivery that had her son in the…
Fascinating science stories overlooked this year
The discoveries, advances and curious research findings that were missed amid covid-19 coverageDec 16th 2020COVID-19 CONSUMED the world’s attention. On this week’s Babbage podcast (embedded below), The Economist’s health-policy editor, Natasha Loder, unveiled some of the top stories she argues were missed amid the coverage of the pandemic. Highlights discussed on the show included a…