New Scientist - USA (2021-12-18)

snowflakes growing. I wanted to make one showing a perfect-looking crystal. Eventually, I worked out how to grow crystals on a f ...

We have been making cheese for millennia, but researchers are only just getting to grips with the hidden world inside every bloc ...

“ The rind, from an ecological perspective, is particularly fascinating” produce the grey-green mould used to make many cheeses, ...

Animal magic If you can trick a bird or an ape, what does that tell you about their minds, wonders Sam Wong ...

later. If another jay is watching, they may pretend to stash their food in multiple places so that the observer doesn’t know whe ...

but what’s more interesting is what it reveals about memory and mental time travel,” she says. “If you don’t remember and don’t ...

JEA N/S TO CK IMO /AL AM Y > W ATER, malted barley and hops. It is the classic recipe for the world’s favourite intoxicant. A ...

can reach some 5 metres up wires in hop fields or ramble through hedgerows. Compounds called alpha acids in the hop cones produc ...

The long history of flavouring beer with hops is just froth compared with how long we have been brewing: evidence of alcoholic d ...

Believe it or not! Science throws up all manner of bizarre and outlandish discoveries. Test your knowledge of the world’s weird ...

B In mathematics, the ham sandwich theorem states that, given n measurable objects in n-dimensional Euclidean space, it is possi ...

Razor sharp Proposed by a medieval monk, Occam’s razor remains the keenest tool for honing our world view, argues biologist John ...

that depend on interactions between genes and their products. I have come to disagree. Although complex pathways and interaction ...

Why we laugh Not being funny, but there is a lot more to laughter than joking around, finds David Robson W HILE there is infecti ...

> “play vocalisations” in 65 species. Most are mammals, but a handful of bird species are also known to signal their harmless ...

FL AS HP OP /GE TT Y^ IM AG ES A belly laugh is a good workout for your trunk muscles The idea that laughter is the best medicin ...

A new hue As we come to understand the secrets of iridescence in nature, we can harness this colourful phenomenon for a more sus ...

The beetles’ nanorods look white because they reflect nearly all light. But other structures can scatter light in a way that mak ...

From reptiles to spiders, some unlikely creatures seem to have the ability to mess around. Why do they do it, asks Michael Marsh ...

Institute of Human Morphology in Moscow. In 2014, Burghardt and his colleagues even described an instance of fish playing: three ...