Society

Linguists have long known that sign languages are as grammatically and logically sophisticated as spoken languages—and also make greater use of “iconicity,” the property by which some words refer to things by resembling them. For […]

“Stranger churches”—Protestant congregations that welcomed speakers of certain languages other than English—in early modern London had “eyes everywhere” to hear, spread and dispel gossip in multiple languages, according to new research.This article is brought to […]

When scientists make important discoveries, both big and small, they typically publish their findings in scientific journals for others to read. This sharing of knowledge helps to advance science: it can, in turn, lead to […]

Housing, climate, cost of living, health—the multitude of interconnected crises the world is facing has spawned a new term: “polycrisis.”This article is brought to you by this site.

Peter Neff understands the allure of the world’s fifth-largest continent.This article is brought to you by this site.

This week, researchers reported an effective way to protect working dogs from heat stress: training them to dunk their heads in cool water. A new computational technique provided a breakthrough in understanding the so-called “pseudogap” […]

From the swimming habits of dead trout to the revelation that some mammals can breathe through their backsides, a group of leading leftfield scientists have been taking their bows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]

Front-line communities, those in regions most severely and immediately affected by increasing weather hazards and climate extremes, can benefit from partnerships between local organizations and academic researchers. However, such coproduction efforts—or collaboration between multiple entities […]

Mammals that can breathe through their backsides, homing pigeons that can guide missiles and sober worms that outpace drunk ones: these are some of the strange scientific discoveries that won this year’s Ig Nobels, the […]

This week, a billionaire made a spacewalk, archaeologists found a new, isolated Neanderthal lineage and the James Webb Space Telescope revealed the extreme outskirts of the Milky Way. And a few other things happened:This article […]