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 S25Odours have a complex topography, and it's been mapped by AI | Aeon Essays   What is the distance between the scent of a rose and the odour of camphor? Are floral smells perpendicular to smoky ones? Is the geometry of ‘odour space’ Euclidean, following the rules about lines, shapes and angles that decorate countless high-school chalkboards? To many, these will seem like either unserious questions or, less charitably, meaningless ones. Geometry is logic made visible, after all; the business of drawing unassailable conclusions from clearly stated axioms. And odour is, let’s be honest, a bit too vague and vaporous for any of that. The folksy idea of smell as the blunted and structureless sense is at least as old as Plato, and I have to confess that, even as an olfactory researcher, I sometimes feel like I’m studying the Pluto of the sensory systems – a shadowy, out-there iceball on a weird orbit.In recent years, however, things have changed dramatically, and understanding what one might call ‘the geometry of smell’ is a field that now enlists task forces of neuroscientists working together with mathematically trained theorists and artificial intelligence (AI) experts. While we’re notoriously bad at intuiting how our minds organise phenomena like colours and smells, machines offer a potential route for outsourcing introspection, and doing it with rigour. They can be trained to mimic human performance on perceptual tasks, and they make available the internal representations they use to do this – the abstract spaces and coordinate frames in which the ineffable stuff of thought lives.
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S1Editor's Note: Navalny wrote the entire memoir himself, dictating some parts, and Yulia Navalnaya is working with the publisher to edit and finalize the manuscript, according to a Knopf representative. The book has already been translated into 11 languages, Navalnaya wrote on X, and a Russian-language edition of the book will be available.
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S310 Years Ago, a Modern Master Made an Underrated Thriller -- And Created His Own Genre  Mike Flanagan is a reigning master of familial horror. Between movies like Doctor Sleep and series like The Haunting of Hill House, his work continually explores ghosts and traumas passed down through generations. He does the same thing in his devastating movie Oculus; though often overshadowed by his later work, Flanagan’s second feature laid out the blueprint for the familial horror that serves as his trademark, cementing him as a modern auteur who can emotionally devastate audiences just as easily as terrify them. Flanagan recently celebrated Oculus’ 10-year anniversary with a screening at The Overlook Film Festival. During a Q&A with Fangoria editor-in-chief Phil Nobile Jr., Flanagan addressed his fascination with familial horror: “I had a very balanced and safe childhood, believe it or not, and so to me, the idea of the family falling apart and home being kind of a place that is fundamentally dangerous has always been very scary.”
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S4Amazon's 'Fallout' Show Captures the Most Important Aspect of the Games  My favorite thing about Fallout games is how every single one lets more roleplay as an absolute dope, stumbling their way into, somehow, saving the world. While my eyes glaze over at a lot of the monotonous exploration and base building in Fallout 4, the undeniable charm of its weird world and hapless inhabitants keeps me coming back. That’s exactly what makes me so happy about Amazon’s Fallout TV series. Every character consistently makes the dumbest decisions possible and, really, that’s what Fallout is all about. It’s pretty typical of post-apocalyptic media to sport dark and brooding tones, just look at the other big video game adaption The Last of Us. But Fallout has always been a bit different. The game series has been heavily inspired by retrofuturist works, fully embracing the post-conflict culture of the United States. Aesthetically, this has always given Fallout a very 1950s look, while a sense of dark humor and irony has always been central to the series’ writing, with both the original games developed by Black Isle and the newer games from Bethesda.
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S5Humane's Co-Founders Want to Cure Your Screen Addiction With an AI Gadget  Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno explain how Humane’s Ai Pin could help us be more present again, how it overcomes AI hallucinations, and reveal how they avoided AirPods’s biggest design flaw.Let’s face it, you’re addicted to your phone, and Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno may be partially to blame. The tech power couple met while working at Apple, where they helped create everything from the Mac, to the iPhone, to the iPad, to the Apple Watch.
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S6Marvel Needs to Learn a Crucial Lesson From 2024's Wildest Superhero Movie  It’s been a rough year for superhero movies, and it’s likely only going to get worse. For unrelated reasons, Marvel and DC both pumped the breaks in 2024, committing to just one major theatrical release each with Deadpool & Wolverine this summer, followed by Joker: Folie à Deux in October. Meanwhile, Sony is taking full advantage of the situation by pumping out an endless stream of Spider-Man-less spinoff movies seemingly made for you to fall asleep to while watching them on a plane. But amid what either feels like a rare blip in an unstoppable march or the beginning of the end of the superhero genre, an unlikely hero emerges from the shadows of Gotham City.Despite Warner Bros. Discovery’s best efforts, indie superhero satire The People’s Joker began its theatrical run last week. And aside from some confused DC fans who seem to think this is the official sequel to 2019’s Joker, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The New Yorker’s film critic Richard Brody even called it “the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen.” (To be fair, Brody’s seemingly never seen a Marvel movie he didn’t hate, but still.)
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S7Apple's Next Big Sci-Fi Show Makes A Brilliant Change to the Book Its Based On  If your doppelgänger from an alternate timeline switched places with you, people would notice, right? In Apple TV+’s ambitious new adaptation of the bestselling novel Dark Matter, one detail from that book is being expanded. And with this very specific change, Dark Matter is now poised to improve upon its source material not by making the sci-fi elements seem more believable but by rendering the human reactions way more relatable.Apple just dropped a new trailer for Dark Matter, hinting at all the twists and turns in the upcoming show. Here’s why the biggest change in the series is a very, very good move.
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S88 Years Later, The Most Underrated Heist Thriller is Getting a Sequel  Heist movies can be hit-and-miss. There’s a fine line between a clever plan that feels inventive and original and a gimmicky plan that feels unbelievable, and many movies try to toe that line without going over it. Occasionally, there’s a movie that dares to go out of an audience's comfort zone and show something truly inventive, and it often is met with mixed results. But against all odds, one of the most divisive heist movie franchises ever is getting another installment — and bringing back the cast that made it great.
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S9This Folding E-Bike Has a Game-Changing Top Speed and Range  Electric bike riders often face the dilemma of going with performance or portability. If you want an exhilarating ride, get ready to lug a heavy e-bike everywhere. If you want a foldable e-bike, don’t expect any thrills on your daily commute. However, Juiced’s new e-bike may not make you compromise on either.According to Juiced Bikes, the JetCurrent Pro is its most powerful e-bike ever with a top speed of 34 mph with pedal assist and a range of more than 70 miles. That’s more than enough to get you to and from the office and might even be faster than jumping into a car for city commutes. We can’t forget all of that power is packed into a foldable design, so the JetCurrent Pro can be stored easily in your apartment’s closet or your car trunk — that is, if you can handle the bike’s 76-pound weight.
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S10Did Marvel Just Sneakily Introduce a Terrifying 'Deadpool 3' Villain?  Marvel’s newest animated show is quickly becoming one of the franchise’s best shows, period. It may even be one of the best TV shows of the year in general. That has a lot to do with the mature themes each episode explores. Sure, X-Men ‘97 might have been greenlit with nostalgia in mind, but the series isn’t at all interested in resting on the laurels of its predecessor, or in giving X-Men fans the comfort food they might have expected from the revival.‘97’s latest episode, “Remember It,” goes further than any that came before. It introduces a devastating reckoning, not only to the X-Men themselves, but perhaps to all mutantkind. And it might be the most relevant to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe at large. Until now, X-Men ‘97 was fairly self-contained... and all the better for it. But the events of “Remember It” may have set the stage for a major villain’s arrival, one that could also appear in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine and play a pivotal role in the MCU.
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S11Bethesda's Biggest RPG Franchise Won't Become a TV Show -- And That's a Good Thing  Amazon’s Fallout TV show premiered on Wednesday, after the company’s unorthodox decision to shift its debut up by two days. That seems to be working out for Prime Video, as the show’s first season immediately reached critical acclaim. That’s naturally led some to ask whether Bethesda, developer of the Fallout games, will cash in on this opportunity by licensing out the rights to its other most popular titles. Yet somewhat surprisingly, studio director Todd Howard shot down any notion that the developer’s other massively popular RPG series is getting an adaptation of its own. “There's nothing in the works,” Todd Howard told IGN when asked whether Bethesda’s other games could get TV adaptations. “Everybody asks about Elder Scrolls, and I keep saying no.”
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S1214 Years Later, Bethesda's Most Revolutionary Fallout Game Still Holds Up  Amazon’s Fallout TV series brings Bethesda’s beloved franchise into a new light, perfectly capturing both the danger and wackiness of the post-apocalyptic Wasteland. While there are plenty of little details sprinkled throughout the show for fans, it’s designed to be an introduction to the world of Fallout. That means, of course, if you’re craving more, you might be lost on which video game to pick up first. Luckily, we feel like there’s a pretty definitive answer to that: you should start with Fallout: New Vegas.The first thing to point out about Fallout is that every game in the series is largely a self-contained experience. While there are certainly references and lore that tie everything together, you can play every single game without knowledge of the others. There are a couple of obvious candidates' for which Fallout game to play first. If you simply want the shortest game, play Fallout Tactics. If you want the most easily accessible game on modern consoles, that’s Fallout 4. But if you’re willing to invest a sliver of time and effort, New Vegas is easily the best introduction to the series’ ideas, and the one that the TV show’s tone and humor most echoes.
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S13Yes - Prince Of Persia Should Be Gaming's Batman  A second Prince Of Persia game in six months is on the way and players should be all the way here for it.In a twist no one saw coming, Ubisoft announced that a second Prince of Persia game is coming this spring. The Rogue Prince Of Persia comes from developer Evil Empire, one of the studios behind the 2018 indie darling Dead Cells, and is set to release into early access May 14.
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S14The Solar Eclipse Gave Astronomers An Unprecedented Window Into What Drives Space Weather  As spectators snapped incredible images of Monday’s solar eclipse, the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) in California captured intimate details about the Sun’s volatility that astronomers would have normally missed.The Sun is very active at the moment. The magnetic field lines that loop across the Sun’s surface sometimes cluster into dense regions. These magnetically dense spots are what astronomers think cause coronal mass ejections, which are sunbursts packed with charged particles that fly at speeds of up to thousands of kilometers per second.
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S1525 Years Later, the Most Iconic Thriller of the '90s May Finally Get the Sequel it Deserves  Some movies are events, totally inseparable from the time they were released. The most example was Barbenheimer, the release of two movies that fueled each other and became an unmissable cinematic experience. But 25 years ago, one horror movie made a splash that many referred to as the first movie to truly go viral. The Blair Witch Project, one of the most influential found-footage horror movies, became a sleeper hit in 1999 thanks to its unique marketing strategy that doubled down on the movie’s conceit that it was real footage of teens investigating a fictional legend. It became a must-see experience, raking in over $200 million at the box office on a budget of less than $1 million. And while you might assume that a hit of such seismic proportions would lead to countless sequels and spinoffs, that hasn’t exactly been the case.
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S16John Wick's New Spinoff Movie Exposes a Concerning Franchise Problem  John Wick’s fate may be up in the air after his latest on-screen appearance, but Lionsgate is fighting hard to keep the Wick franchise alive. It’s been steadily expanding into spinoffs, like prequel series The Continental — and though that one didn’t make much of a splash in 2023, there’s one more spinoff on the way. The world of Wick gets a little bit bigger with Ballerina, a new film set between the events of John Wick 3: Parabellum and John Wick Chapter 4. It won’t give us another John Wick adventure, but Reeves is actually set to appear in the upcoming film. Reeves even revealed specific plot details about the film at CCXP 2022.
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S17DJI's New Drone is Cheaper, Immersive, and Does Stunts at the Push of a Button  After releasing the first Avata nearly two years ago, DJI made some major improvements to a second-gen cinewhoop drone simply called the Avata 2. It’s still the small, lightweight design that lets it nimbly capture cinematic drone footage indoors or outdoors, but DJI has added some new accessories and features to make it much easier to use.Along with the Avata 2, DJI’s Goggles 3 FPV headset has a picture-in-picture feature so you can keep an eye on your surroundings while you’re zipping around. On top of the headset, the new DJI RC Motion 3 enables the new Easy Acro mode that gets the Avata 2 to do a front or backflip, barrel roll, or 180-degree drift with the push of a button. This mode reminds us a lot of DJI’s QuickShots feature on its other drones which similarly gets you some impressive drone footage with one click.
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S18Steam Just Quietly Released the Most Relaxing MMORPG  Launching a massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a daunting prospect these days, with behemoths like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 dominating the genre. But while similar games have a hard time finding a foothold, there may be a chance for an altogether different kind of MMORPG to make its mark. Today, a gentler MMO from the developer of a nearly universally acclaimed adventure lands on PC, where it may find an audience in players looking for a new way to play together online.First launched on iOS in 2019, Sky: Children of the Light comes to Steam after staggered releases on Android, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation. In that time, Sky has garnered multiple awards, and been nominated for best mobile game at The Game Awards, the New York Game Awards, and the DICE Awards. It’s also gained a devoted audience thanks to its unique twist on social interaction in games, who’ve helped raise money for charities including Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) and The Trevor Project through in-game fundraisers.
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S19'Palworld' Update Will Finally Gives Players a Crucial Pok  After taking the world by storm earlier this year, Palworld, the Pokémon-inspired crafting game from indie developer Pocket Pair, will finally introduce a much-requested element to the monster-catching experience later this year. The Palworld Arena will add a player-versus-player mode that lets players pit their strongest creatures against one another in a fight for PalSupremacy. Pocket Pair announced the update during Wednesday’s indie showcase, Triple-i Initiative.
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S20'X-Men 97' Head Director: "I Wouldn't Get My Hopes Up For Cassandra Nova"  The fifth episode of X-Men ‘97 has seemingly launched a million fan theories, but the most popular one is apparently wrong. After the episode, titled “Remember It,” ended with a genocidal Sentinel attack against the mutant island nation of Genosha, viewers have wondered how the wild cliffhanger will resolve itself. Will a time-traveling Cable undo the damage? Is the supervillain Apocalypse behind the surprise attack? Or maybe Mystique? But one name in particular seems to be on everyone’s lips: Cassandra Nova.An iconic X-Men antagonist first introduced to the comics in 2001, Cassandra Nova is basically Charles Xavier’s evil twin (it’s more complicated than that, but we’ll get into it further down). In the comic book plotline that inspired X-Men ‘97 Episode 5, Nova is also the villain behind this deadly attack on Genosha. So it makes sense that fans thought the cartoon would follow the same arc and introduce the character.
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S21Hulu Just Quietly Released 2024's Most Moving Time-Travel Movie  Time travel is metaphor for grief — and music is the key to unlocking it — in this lo-fi romantic drama.Grief is never convenient. It can manifest at the least opportune moments, and can be triggered by the most innocuous things. Whether it be a scent or a song, memory has a way of latching on, bringing up moments that we’d rather suppress.
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S2229 Years Later, Star Trek's Wildest Body-Jumping Episode Just Made a Big Comeback  Body switching is a classic sci-fi trope. From Freaky Friday to Farscape, and of course, most of Quantum Leap, the idea of the consciousness from one person inhabiting the body of a different person will never stop being the fuel for speculative stories that are both hilarious and profound. But, when Star Trek invented the “joined” species of the Trill in 1991, it took the body-switching/body-surfing trope to a new level. While a specific Trill symbiont might live for several hundreds of years, this slug-like creature generally inhabited a humanoid host. This “joining” often created a new hybrid personality each time, sort of like Time Lord regeneration from Doctor Who mashed up with internal alien parasites from Alien; a chest-burster that never burst, but just stayed in you forever.And if all of that wasn’t wild enough, on June 12, in the episode “Facets,” 1995, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine added a new wrinkle to Trill canon. Not only were the memories of all the previous hosts alive and well in the current symbiont, but, through a process called “zhian’tara,” a specific host’s personality could leave the symbiont and enter into the body of... anyone! Basically, this was Trill joining via spacey magic, and now, 29 years after “Facets,” Star Trek: Discovery is doubling down (tripling down?) on this very specific form of consciousness transfer in the Season 5 episode “Jinaal.” Spoilers ahead.
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S23Nicolas Cage Can't Save His Disappointing New Sci-Fi Thriller  Credit to Arcadian where it’s due: What we have here is a modest-budget, original indie horror movie free from any kind of IP branding. We could always use more of these. But sadly that’s pretty much all Arcadian has going for it. In execution, Ben Brewer’s doomsday creature feature treads fully worn ground that you can almost make out the footprints left behind by countless other “The Walking Dead/Last of Us” types.While a mostly confident production from Brewer with flashes of awe-inducing brilliance — nearly all of it owed to its harrowing monsters — Arcadian is too unengaging to really raise hell, and too uninspired to stand tall in its crowded genre space. It is a movie cursed by a lumbering story and plagued by such maddening camera work that you might beg the DPs to stay still. Absent of calcium and musculature, Arcadian conjures a mostly middling viewing experience that wastes its capable star Nicolas Cage.
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S2445 Years Ago, a Sleazy Apocalypse Movie Launched a Legendary Franchise  George Miller’s first movie was cheap and sleazy. It was still good enough to spawn a franchise.Modern moviemaking is intrinsically linked to high stakes. That’s true not just when you think about the various beams and monsters attacking our cities, but also when you consider how much pressure is put on every new franchise to succeed the second it enters the world. If a studio puts a large amount of money behind a new movie in the hopes it will launch a series of sequels, they expect that bet to pay off immediately. They want their franchise starters to come out of the gate swinging, and if they don’t, they rarely get a second chance.
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S26S27S28Older Swiss women just set a global legal precedent for challenging their nation's climate change policy  The European Court of Human Rights has issued a groundbreaking ruling in a case between a group of Swiss women and their government. It found that Switzerland is in violation of the European convention on human rights for failing in its duties to combat climate change. The court also set out a path for organisations to bring further cases. This case was the first opportunity for the court to consider the duties of states in the context of climate change, and the first climate change case to be heard by an international human rights court. The decision will have a ripple effect across Europe and beyond, as it sets a binding precedent for how courts should deal with the rising tide of litigation in which it is argued that the climate crisis involves human rights violations.
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S29S30Could Israel's strike against the Iranian embassy in Damascus escalate into a wider regional war? Expert Q&A  Ever since Israel launched a strike against the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1, killing seven people including two senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, fears have mounted that Tehran would order a revenge attack against Israel. Bloodcurdling rhetoric from Iran’s leaders has done nothing to allay those fears, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declaring that Israel “must be punished and it shall be”. Meanwhile, the US president has promised Israel “ironclad” US support and vowed to “do all we can to protect Israel’s security”. So how worried should the west be? Could this escalate into a wider regional war? We spoke with Scott Lucas, a Middle East scholar at University College Dublin, who has been writing about tensions in the Middle East for many years.1. What prompted Israel to launch its attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus? Are they not busy enough in Gaza without the prospect of opening another front in the conflict?
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S31What millennials and gen Z professionals need to know about developing a meaningful career  What is a “meaningful career”? It can be doing purpose-driven work that aligns with your values. It may mean finding a working arrangement that balances the different parts of your life. Or it could be a career that gives you the opportunity to be your authentic self, while contributing to the world or improving others’ lives. The answer is different for everyone, and can change over time. Defining a meaningful career can be difficult enough – but then you need to get there. This is a deeply personal journey that involves identifying your values, passions and interests, and finding environments where you can thrive.
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S32The triumph of vinyl: Vintage is back as LP sales continue to skyrocket  Previously relegated to the dustbin of media history, the vinyl LP has undergone a revival during the past decade to once again become the best selling physical format for recorded music today.Where barely one million new vinyl albums were sold in the United States in 2006, that figure has grown every year since, soaring to just over 49 million units in 2023. One in every 15 vinyl albums sold last year — approximately seven per cent of all sales (more than three million units) — were by Taylor Swift.
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S33Ukraine recap: Russia intensifies its air war as Kyiv begs for western military aid  The air war in Ukraine has intensified considerably over the past few months, with a dramatic increase in the number of sorties being flown by Russia’s airforce. Some observers believe that, having gained a degree of initiative on the ground – for example, with the capture of the strategically important city of Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region – the Kremlin’s war planners want to capitalise on this by maintaining the momentum. Accordingly, Russia has intensified its assault on Ukraine’s defences, while maintaining the attacks on power infrastructure that have been a key strategy since it launched its invasion in February 2022.
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S34The federal government's proposed AI legislation misses the mark on protecting Canadians  There is global consensus among civil society, academia and industry that artificial intelligence adoption comes with risks and harms. Addressing these concerns have been marginal in Canada’s national AI strategy. The federal government’s major response — the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) — is flawed and does not address AI’s current and tangible impacts on our society.The Canadian Tracking Automated Governance (TAG) register lists 303 applications of AI within government agencies in Canada. The fact that AIDA as presently drafted will not apply to government use means this legislation is out of step with AI governance in other AI leading nations and the expressed interests of government employees.
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S35S36S37Despite what you might hear, weather prediction is getting better, not worse  Australia’s weather bureau copped harsh criticism after El Niño failed to deliver a much-vaunted dry summer in eastern Australia. Parts of northern Queensland in the path of Tropical Cyclone Jasper had a record wet December and areas of central Victoria had a record wet January. Overall, the summer was 19% wetter than average for Australia as a whole.This led to debate in the media and during senate estimates around the Bureau of Meteorology’s ability to make accurate predictions as the climate changes. The value of seasonal forecasting in particular has been called into question.
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S38Choice and control: are whitegoods disability supports? Here's what proposed NDIS reforms say  Many Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late last year. Now a draft NDIS reform bill has been tabled. In this series, experts examine what new proposals could mean for people with disability.The government’s recently introduced bill aims to get the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) “back on track”. Against a backdrop of concerns over the scheme’s cost, it sets out changes that should substantially reform the NDIS over the next few years.
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S39S40The war in Gaza risks pulling in Hezbollah and Lebanon  Postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University's Centre for International Policy and Defence (CIDP), Queen's University, Ontario The devastating war in Gaza is now in its sixth month, and the figures are alarming: more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed. Almost one-third of the population is suffering catastrophic food insecurity and over two million (almost the entire population) have been displaced.
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S41Advancing the rights of girls and women promotes justice and is also effective climate action  Our team talked to 45 people, including key policy decision-makers on social and environmental policies at the national level, and our findings will form part of a full report to UNICEF Dominican Republic. We noted that, despite the occurrence of severe tropical storms and worsening environmental disasters in small island developing states across Latin America and the Caribbean, few of the development professionals we interviewed listed climate change vulnerability as a key factor in childhood development goals. Global climate policy and action plans also largely fail to speak to gender and childhood vulnerabilities.
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S42The art of musical tribute, including Maestro Fresh Wes hip hop sampling, moved fans during Junos 2024  Annual music award ceremonies — like the recent Juno Awards of 2024 in Canada — afford opportunities to pay tribute to artists who have passed away and acknowledge the living art of creative musical and cultural interpretation.At the Junos 2024, memorial tributes were given to musical greats Robbie Robertson and Gordon Lightfoot. Yet another form of memorialization — and musical re-interpretation — was witnessed via hip hop sampling when Maestro Fresh Wes performed in celebration of his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as the “godfather of Canadian hip hop.”
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S43Grant Robertson is swapping cabinet for academia - but should ex-politicians lead universities?  The appointment of former Labour finance minister Grant Robertson as vice-chancellor is a first for Otago University, which has never had a non-academic in the role. But it’s not hard to see why the university’s governing body made the decision.Combine this national predicament with Otago’s own specific financial problems, and the choice of new vice-chancellor makes strategic sense. Robertson’s public profile and political networks may be useful assets at this critical moment. Cometh the hour, cometh the former finance minister.
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S44City planners love infill development. So why are cities struggling with it, and how can they do better?  Infill development is an increasingly hot topic in Australian cities. It involves building on unused or underutilised land within existing urban areas. City planners see infill development as essential. It’s a way to end urban sprawl and improve service delivery to a growing population at lower cost. Infill development has increased in popularity over several decades because it uses existing physical and social infrastructure, is close to amenities and enhances local economies.
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S45No, beetroot isn't vegetable Viagra. But here's what else it can do  Beetroot has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Supply issues in recent months have seen a shortage of tinned beetroot on Australian supermarket shelves. At one point, a tin was reportedly selling on eBay for more than A$65. Is beetroot really vegetable Viagra, as UK TV doctor Michael Mosley suggests? What about beetroot’s other apparent health benefits – from reducing your blood pressure to improving your daily workout? Here’s what the science says.
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S46Trillions of tonnes of carbon locked in soil has been left out of environmental models - and it's on the move  We all know about the carbon in Earth’s atmosphere, and probably about the carbon contained in plants and the bodies of animals. But a substantial fraction of the carbon in the planet’s land-based ecosystems is held in something so obvious we might overlook it: soil.Even if we do think about carbon in soil, we are usually thinking of carbon in organic matter in the soil, such as plant litter, bacteria or animal waste. However, the inorganic, mineral component of soil also contains carbon.
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S47S48Is the shine coming off Japan's bullet trains?  Just ten days before the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, Japan opened its Tōkaidō Shinkansen, a high-speed rail line connecting Tokyo with Osaka. Shinkansen bullet trains showcased the high quality of Japanese railway technology to the world, with trains travelling at up to 285 km/h (177 mph).More than ten trains depart from Tokyo each hour, and the average delay remains at just 54 seconds per train – much lower than in other countries such as the UK. So far, Japan’s bullet trains have also recorded zero passenger fatalities in their 60 years of operation.
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S49Byron's letters reveal the real queer love and loss that inspired his poetry  It’s July 5 1807. A drunk and tearful young man sits in his college rooms at Cambridge writing in a “chaos of hope and sorrow” to his childhood friend, Elizabeth Pigot. He has just parted with the one he calls his “Cornelian”, who he loves “more than any human being” – and he is pouring out his heart.The young man is Lord Byron and his Cornelian is the Cambridge chorister John Edleston. He appears as “the Cornelian” in Byron’s prose writing, named for a gift he had given Byron. Gift and giver were immortalised in Byron’s first poetry collection, Hours of Idleness (1807), and Byron wore the Cornelian ring till the end of his life. This month marks 200 years since his death in 1824.
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S50Africa's wildebeest: those that can't migrate are becoming genetically weaker - new study  Wildebeest – large African antelopes with distinctively curved horns – are famous for their great migrations on the grasslands of eastern and southern Africa. One hundred and fifty years ago, they migrated in huge numbers across the continent, in search of grazing and water and to find suitable areas for calving. Migration is crucial to sustain their large populations. But their routes are being interrupted by roads, oil and gas pipelines, railway lines, fences, cities, livestock and farmland.
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