Issue_12
20 articles-
How Sex Is Like Your Thermostat
“If you stroke the thermostat just like so…”starmanseries via Flickr Have you ever stopped to consider how sex is like a thermostat? Sex may not sit in a beige box on your wall (or it might, no judging) but there are some striking similarities. The common ingredient is feedback. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. […] -
How to Learn to Love to Practice
In interviews, famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to “do what you love.” But mastering a skill, even one that you deeply love, requires a huge amount of drudgery. Any challenging activity—from computer programming to playing a musical instrument to athletics—requires focused and concentrated practice. A perfect […] -
The Natural World Is an Elephant World
Elephant dung perfumes the air, a fresh, sweet smell, with undertones of sour vegetation. These balls of waste, scattered across the Kenyan savanna, carry the aroma of the bush, an open sea of acacia trees, aloe vera, Sansevieria, and drapes of elephant pudding, a succulent vine that tastes like salty snap beans but smells like […] -
Strange Eyeless Fish Creates Its Own Sonar Signals to “See”
The blind cavefish alongside two of its sighted relativesImage Courtesy of NYU Deep in some pitch-black, underwater caves in Mexico, there lives a peculiar little pinkish-white fish. Only about four inches long, this albino has taste buds on the outside of its lower jaw, sleeps very little, and, most interestingly, has no eyes. Nautilus Members […] -
Austria’s Ahead-of-Its-Time Institute That Was Lost to Nazis
In 1911, Popular Science Monthly published an enthusiastic description of a young, private experimental-biology institute in Vienna, lauding its “remarkable scientific productivity resulting from only eight years of research.”The author, zoologist Charles Lincoln Edwards, attributed the success of the Biologische Versuchsanstalt (Insitute of Experimental Biology) to its many advanced experimental devices. The institute, popularly known as […]
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Scientists Create Cybernetic Links Between People—by DJing
DJ Angst kicked off the late-February show at the Root Cellar Lounge in Bloomington, Indiana, keeping in mind that, as the first DJ to play, it was his job to figure out what would lure people to the dance floor. As his name implies, he prefers austere, dark electronic music, but he gathered that the […]
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Mood Ring—Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices
Three examples of speech from a person with bipolar disorder. The rows show one second each of manic, euthymic (normal), and depressed speech. The colored rectangles show various features extracted from the speech, where color indicates the amplitude of that feature for that speaker. The 10 features measure qualities of the person’s voice like pitch, […]
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When Theft Was Worse Than Murder
Hundreds of years of trial documents reveal our changing attitudes to violent crime.
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The Gaia Hypothesis Is Still Giving Us Feedback
Revisiting James Lovelock’s theory as it approaches 50.
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One Percenters Control Online Reviews
Contrary to appearances, online reviews reflect the opinions of the few.
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The Acquired Tastes of Foodies and Cockroaches
How genes influence the animal palate. -
This Iconoclast Injected Life Into Artificial Body Parts
Laura Niklason recognized that synthetic organs can’t grow without mechanical stress. -
Ants Swarm Like Brains Think
A neuroscientist studies ant colonies to understand feedback in the brain. -
Colleges Want Students with Character, But Can’t Measure It
SATs are on their way out, but new tests aren’t quite ready. -
Secret Military Test, Coming Soon to Your Spanish Class
A powerful, precise language aptitude test is entering civilian life.