Mind
Getting to Know the Voices in Your Head
We talk to ourselves to stay motivated, tame unruly emotions, plan for the future and even maintain a sense of self
Stories by Ferris Jabr
The Sciences
Creating Tastier and Healthier Fruits and Veggies With a Modern Alternative to GMOs
By combining traditional plant breeding with ever-faster genetic sequencing tools, researchers are making fruits and vegetables more flavorful, colorful, shapely and nutritious
...
The Year Drones Ruined Christmas
Kylie ran towards her fallen dragonfly and knelt beside it. One of its four wings had snapped nearly in half. She rummaged through a toolbox until she found a small tube of accelerseal, bit off the cap and squeezed a generous amount onto the wing’s fracture, holding the two pieces together...
Leafy Green ‘Solar-Powered’ Sea Slugs Begin to Reveal Their True Colors
Nature is full of thieves. Instead of laboriously collecting pollen and nectar from flowers, robber bees raid the hives of other pollinators and steal the honey within.
The Sciences
8 More Amazing Images of Living Things from the 2013 BioScapes Competition [Slide Show]
A selection of honored images created by scientists, professional photographers and hobbyists
The Sciences
Life under the Microscope: Stunning Photographs from the BioScapes Competition [Slide Show]
Microscopes transform the way we see and understand the creatures on our planet
Sustainability
Where the Wild Bees Are: Documenting a Loss of Native Bee Species between the 1800s and 2010s
Croplands and climate change displace native bees
Why Life Does Not Really Exist
I have been fascinated with living things since childhood. Growing up in northern California, I spent a lot of time playing outdoors among plants and animals.
Catching Ourselves in the Act of Thinking
From 1934 to 1970, Louie Mayer worked as a cook and housekeeper for writers Virginia and Leonard Woolf at their home in Rodmell, England. Her very first day on the job, she noticed something strange...
Tech
Do You Prefer To Read on Paper or Screens? [Poll]
Tell us how paper and digital devices shape your reading habits
Are We Too Close to Making Gattaca a Reality?
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Marie and Antonio Freeman step into a doctor’s office to design their next child. “Your extracted eggs, Marie, have been fertilized with Antonio’s sperm,” the doctor says...
Tech
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens
E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but reading on paper still has its advantages
The Sciences
Tablet Computers Help Children in Remote Villages Learn to Read
Children in rural Ethiopia are teaching themselves to read with Android tablets
Mental Health
Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime
Research on naps, meditation, nature walks and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity...
Film Review: “GMO OMG” SRSLY? An #EpicFail in Exercising Our Right to Know
Jeremy Seifert’s new documentary “GMO OMG” opens with a series of maudlin pastoral scenes—sun-dappled forests, kids playing outdoors, a close-up of ants crawling in a line—as a man’s somber voice reads Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things.” With this subtle Malickian prelude out of the way, the film begins more earnestly...
The Sciences
Farming a Toxin to Keep Crops Healthy
Genetically modified crops that produce the pest-killing toxin Bt increase yields and reduce the use of noxious chemical insecticides. But like any powerful tool, they must be used responsibly...
The Sciences
The Mind-Boggling Math of Migratory Beekeeping
31 billion honeybees plus 810,000 acres of almond trees equals 700 billion almonds—and one looming agricultural crisis
The Sciences
How to Love a Whale Shark
Every year thousands of tourists descend on congregations of the world’s largest fish. What is the cost of all that attention?
The Sciences
The Science of the Great Molasses Flood
In 1919 a wave of syrup swept through the streets of Boston. Fluid dynamics explains why it was even more devastating than a typical tsunami
The Sciences
How to Swim in Molasses: Microbes Have Evolved Many Wacky Ways of Moving Through Fluids
For some of the world's tiniest and most abundant creatures, moving through water is a fantastically difficult feat
