How to arm Caesarean babies with the gut bacteria they need
Oct 17th 2020CHILDBIRTH IS MESSY. When a baby comes out, a lot else comes out with it. Some of this material is inevitable, such…
British Science Journalist of the Year
Oct 17th 2020Oliver Morton, The Economist’s Briefings editor, has been named British Science Journalist of the Year by the Association…
Does sound, like light, have a maximum speed?
Oct 17th 2020WHEN IT COMES to cosmic speed limits, light gets all the attention. Its velocity in a vacuum, a tad below 300m metres…
A ban by World Rugby could prove influential for transgender sports
Oct 9th 2020IT IS THE latest development in a bitter argument. On October 9th World Rugby, the global governing body for rugby…
Farmers of old relied on El Niño
Oct 10th 2020EVERY FOUR or five years, vast quantities of warm water build up along the west coast of South America. This phenomenon,…
Who won this year’s Nobel science prizes?
Oct 8th 2020OCTOBER’S FIRST week is a nervous time for scientists with serious accomplishments under their belts—for this…
A new device may help stop the robbery of turtles’ nests
Oct 10th 2020TURTLES HAVE A problem. They are delicious. And so are their eggs. That has led to heavy hunting in the past. These…
A novel polymer should make 3D printing more effective
Oct 10th 2020MATERIALS SCIENTISTS have long sought to emulate biology’s trick of joining materials that have wildly different…
A tool for editing genomes wins the Nobel prize for chemistry
For the first time, an all-female science team is honouredOct 7th 2020ALL ORGANISMS suffer from viral infections, and all have…