In this week’s issue: How the healing power of silence can improve our mental and physical health.
Death’s-head moths correct course based on an internal “compass,” a new study finds, revealing insights into how insects traverse such long distances during seasonal migrations.
Logistical and ethical challenges are complicating the design of efficacy studies
U.S. Title IX law update requiring mandatory reporting of sexual misconduct would cause harm, they say
Long magnetic lull mimics Maunder Minimum, when sunspots largely disappeared 400 years ago
University of Delaware finding vindicates whistleblowers
Star formation after the big bang appears much faster than models had forecast
Read that research and more this week in Science. https://fcld.ly/zebukkw
Marram grass, or beachgrass, grows on and stabilizes coastal sand dunes on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula. Grasses, whether terrestrial or submarine, tend to be undervalued but have influenced the trajectory of human history through their domestication as food staples, as well as natural ecosystems worldwide. If restored and conserved appropriately, grasslands can benefit climate change mitigation efforts. See the special section beginning on page 590.
A new special issue of Science explores the unrecognized value of grass: https://fcld.ly/bo80dpr
An individual’s social network and community — their ‘social capital’ — has been thought to influence outcomes ranging from earnings to health. But measuring social capital is challenging. In two papers in this week’s issue, Raj Chetty and his colleagues use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to construct a Social Capital Atlas containing measures of social capital for each ZIP code, high school and college in the United States. The researchers measure three types of social capital: connectedness between different types of people, social cohesion and civic engagement. They find that children who grow up in communities where people of low and high socio-economic status interact more have substantially greater chances of rising out of poverty. The team then examines what might limit social interactions across class lines, finding a roughly equal contribution from lack of exposure — because children in different socio-economic groups go to different schools, for example — and friending bias, the tendency for people to befriend people similar to them.
Two viruses plus a child’s genetic background may explain a recent surge in the United Kingdom
Success rates for white scientists far exceed the NSF average, whereas Black and Asian researchers do worse
Giant study of ancient pottery and DNA challenges common evolutionary explanation for lactase persistence
A small marine isopod plays a role in fertilizing red seaweed, according to a new report that presents evidence of animal-mediated “pollination” in the marine environment. Read that study and more this week in Science: https://fcld.ly/fhhe8ba
Grab a copy from newsstands now or get our app to download digital and audio editions. https://newscientist.com/issue/3397/
Excitingly, scientists say that alternative universes are allowed by physics. We find out about the leading multiverse theories, and establish whether they could harbour an alternate version of you.
Species tend to live in narrower slices of mountainside on tropical versus temperate mountains. Stronger competition in the tropics explains this pattern for birds. For example, the habitable range of this white-tipped sicklebill (Eutoxeres aquila) is limited as a result of competition with its close relative, the buff-tailed sicklebill (Eutoxeres condamini). See page 416.
Fast-spreading subvariants are coming and going. But an entirely new variant could still emerge
Satellites capture fall in light-blocking pollution
Finding sequences that code for short proteins could add thousands of genes
Boomers Daily 