BBC Knowledge June 2017

MAN LIFE AFTER From asteroid strike to climate change to nuclear war, humanity faces all kinds of existential threats. But, if o ...

E are living through the dawn of a new epoch in our planet’s history – the Anthropocene. Humans have always shaped aspects of th ...

AI TAKEOVER Experts estimate that we’ll arrive at an AI as smart as a human within the next few decades. But it won’t stop there ...

Brazil, they reported cities, roads and fields along the banks of major rivers. After the population was decimated by diseases t ...

“SPECIES THAT HAVE CLOSE BONDS WITH HUMANITY ARE MOST LIKELY TO SUFFER” microbes,” explains Weisman. “Anything that looks delici ...

sizes – all ticking time bombs that humanity has left behind. Some of those events could lead to fires that may burn for decades ...

3 YEARS 20 YEARS 300 YEARS Pipes burst in colder regions, flooding cities with water. Buildings lose structural integrity as the ...

Caribbean flamingos create a colourful spectacle in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Wildlife photographer Alejandro Prieto has docum ...

A parent flamingo, most likely the father based on the adult bird’s height, feeds its chick. Flamingos lay a single, large, whit ...

Flamingos are well-known for being gregarious, but Caribbean flamingos can buck this trend. Some colonies of only three or four ...

Outside of the breeding season, feeding, preening and loafing (resting) account for most of a flamingo’s daily activities. Feedi ...

A single bird sits at Rio Lagartos, the species’ main nest site in Mexico. Nest mounds create an austere sight at the end of the ...

All flamingo species gather their youngsters together in nursery groups, watched over by ‘babysitters’ while the parents go off ...

Like all flamingos, Caribbeans have jet black primary and secondary wing feathers. Phoenicopterus, the genus to which the Caribb ...

Flamingo nesting colonies are noisy, bustling affairs as the birds are active around the clock caring for growing chicks. The li ...

ILLUSTRATION: CHARIS TSEVIS | GENETICS SCIENCE IKA, Ebola, flu, even the boring old common cold – we’re all familiar with the vi ...

HUMAN ...

degraded beyond the point of being recognisably virus-like, weathered within the genome like molecular fossils. For many years, ...

Conversely, viruses are also full of DNA sequences that attract molecules that switch genes on. In a functional retrovirus, thes ...

Once there, they help to recruit the molecular machinery that turns genes on or off. “These KRAB ZFPs have been viewed as ‘kille ...