Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it’s getting increasingly complex

The extraordinary Chinese writing system has over 4,000 core complex characters – and they’ve been getting more complex over time.
Continue to article

How the Puritans once banned Christmas in Massachusetts

You have likely heard the story of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" — but what about the one where the Puritans in Massachusetts banned the holiday altogether?
Continue to article

Flexibility is key to building a carbon neutral power system

To manage future electricity demand in line with the EU's Energy Roadmap 2050, power grids need to rely on both supply and demand flexibility and be structured as a system of systems.
Continue to article

Clear Is a Pox on America’s Airports

Happy holidays to everyone but the company for skipping the security line.
Continue to article

Five ways TikTok is seen as threat to US national security

Many in the United States see TikTok, the highly popular video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, as a threat to national security.
Continue to article

Bushwalkers accidentally discover Australia's first known bioluminescent millipedes

Scott Kemp first saw glow-in-the-dark millipedes in the Illawarra 18 years ago, but he had no idea he was making a significant scientific discovery.
Continue to article

Japanese McDonald’s Restrooms Have Phone Cleaning Devices Built Into Their Sinks

We wash our hands in public restrooms, so why not clean our phones? This is such a smart idea!
Continue to article

When Argentina Used World Cup Soccer to Whitewash Its Dirty War

'We should not play soccer amid the concentration camps and torture chambers,' wrote proponents of an international tournament boycott that year.
Continue to article

Why heiress Marlene Engelhorn wants most of her fortune to be taxed away

What would you do if you inherited millions of dollars? Would you reimburse your debts? Go on a travelling spree? Or lobby your government to take it away from you in the name of tax justice? Austrian heiress #MarleneEngelhorn was left with millions of euros from her family #business. But as co-founder of the organisation Tax Me Now, she wants the government to take around 90 percent of her wealth through a more equitable taxation system.
Continue to article

Australia’s mountain mist frog declared extinct as red list reveals scale of biodiversity crisis

Experts describe it as a ‘beautiful endemic rainforest species’, one of several that have not been seen for decades
Continue to article

Where Has All the Mustard Gone?

For months, mustard has been tough to find on grocery store shelves in Europe. It's a combination of geopolitical instability and wild temperatures.
Continue to article

11,000-Year-Old Carving of Man Holding His Penis, Surrounded by Leopards, Is Oldest-Known Depiction of a Narrative Scene

The Neolithic panel indicates a shift from hunting-and-gathering to an agrarian farming society among the Turkish region.
Continue to article

DNA from elusive human relatives the Denisovans has left a curious mark on modern people in New Guinea

Humanity carries traces of other populations in our DNA – and a new study shows how one of these ancestors has influenced the immune systems of modern Papuans.
Continue to article

Ancient human relative used fire, surprising discoveries suggest

Charcoal and burned bones offer intriguing — if controversial — clues that the species Homo naledi made hearths to light its way and cook in dark caves.
Continue to article

Japanese hanko: What's in a name (stamp)?

The intricately carved hanko has been long associated with authenticity in Japan, but as ready-made alternatives and digital versions emerge, is it still relevant?
Continue to article

Texas Bookstores Are Writing Their Own Stories

Indie bookshops across the state are embracing change, to thrive and stay alive. But a lot depends on the upcoming holiday season.
Continue to article

Footprints Claimed as Evidence of Ice Age Humans in North America Need Better Dating, New Research Shows

Recent research claimed that preserved footprints were from the last ice age. Now, a new study disputes the evidence of such an early age.
Continue to article

Why most men don't have enough close friends

Friendships aren't just about those you sit with on the school bus or play alongside on your childhood baseball team — they are a core component of the human experience, experts say. But making and retaining deep, meaningful friendships as an adult is hard, especially for men, according to research.
Continue to article

How Samuel Adams Helped Ferment a Revolution

A virtuoso of the eighteenth-century version of viral memes and fake news, he had a sense of political theatre that helped create a radical new reality.
Continue to article

To Fight Climate Change, Canada Turns to Indigenous People to Save Its Forests

Canada is looking to its Indigenous communities to help manage its boreal forests, the world’s largest intact forest ecosystem and one of its biggest stores of carbon.
Continue to article

The Only Way the U.S. Can Win the Tech War with China

The tech war between China and the U.S. over advanced semiconductors is rapidly heating up, but the U.S. needs allies to win
Continue to article

Hand of Irulegi: ancient Spanish artefact could help trace origins of Basque language

The Vascones, an iron age tribe from whose language modern Basque is thought to descend, previously viewed as largely illiterate
Continue to article

Never Completely Dutch: Flemish Writers in the Land of Freedom

Writers Ivo Victoria, Sarah Meuleman and Geert Buelens all found it liberating to move to the Netherlands. But it wasn’t long before they encountered the downsides of their destination country.
Continue to article

To Swim in the Seine

Reimaging the Seine’s restoration as one where rivers are enfranchised to their natural right to run free and clean is a hopeful vision.
Continue to article

Neanderthals: how a carnivore diet may have led to their demise

Zinc in their bones reveal that these early humans were top of the food chain.
Continue to article

How Tucson, Arizona is facing up to a megadrought

As the south-western United States faces the worst drought in more than a millennium, a city on the banks of a dry riverbed may have answers for gleaning water from the desert.
Continue to article

Why Egypt became one of the biggest chokepoints for Internet cables

When underwater cables congregate in one place, things get tricky.
Continue to article

Rare golden sword pommel acquired by Scottish museum

The pommel, which is about 1,300 years old, was found in 2019 by a metal detectorist near Stirling.
Continue to article

Man who plays dead on TikTok gets new life as corpse on TV crime show

Josh Nalley specialized in pretending to be a lifeless body on social media – then CSI: Vegas came calling.
Continue to article

Cache of 19th-Century Blue Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Arizona Mineshaft

The seven pairs of pants open a portal into life in the Castle Dome mining district
Continue to article

Axon evidence-storing system full of flaws, lawyer says, as police consider expansion

A defence lawyer says police's private American-provided evidence storing system is derailing criminal trials and letting in the wrong people.
Continue to article

The scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field

scientists in Denmark have taken magnetic signals measured by ESA’s Swarm satellite mission and converted them into sound – and for something that protects us, the result is pretty scary.
Continue to article

Raising the drawbridge: why are so many Australians creating their own countries?

By some estimations, Australia hosts around a third of the world’s self-declared mini-kingdoms. There are three good reasons for that
Continue to article

"Dirty" cows are destroying the Amazon rainforest

The beef industry is flattening the Amazon, even when companies tell you it’s not.
Continue to article

Bush Stone-Curlew chick hatching from its egg

Continue to article

Adapting Sesame Street for Russian TV — What Could Go Wrong?

“Our preschoolers are much smarter than American children,” a professor insisted. “We will need a more advanced curriculum for the show.”
Continue to article

Where to Find Tienda Mexicana cerca de mí in USA

Tienda mexicana cerca de mí: A guide showing you where to find Mexican stores in the USA that sells Mexican products.
Continue to article

The Instagram capital of the world is a terrible place to be

Just because you can (sort of) afford to go somewhere doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it.
Continue to article

Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

The first in The Nameless Republic trilogy. A complex world with a very un-European civilization. Very readable.
Continue to article

How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned.
Continue to article

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Opened a Psychic Bookstore

A considerable mess greeted the station sergeant who peered into London's The Psychic Bookshop in the early morning hours of February 6, 1928. Books and papers
Continue to article

More than half of Silicon Valley residents want to leave: ‘The mood is darkening’

A whopping 64% of residents in Silicon Valley are worried the region is on the wrong track.
Continue to article

Google discontinues Google Translate in mainland China

Google has discontinued its Google Translate services in mainland China, removing one of the company’s few remaining services that it had provided in a country where most Western social media platforms are blocked
Continue to article

Walled Culture – a compact, non-technical history of digital copyright and its problems over the last 30 years, and the social, economic and technolog

Continue to article

Finland wants to transform how we make clothes

Firms behind innovative fibres says they can make fashion a more sustainable business.
Continue to article

Netherlands researchers break the 30 percent barrier in solar cells

Using perovskite with existing solar cell technologies can increase their energy conversion efficiencies. It is only about scaling it up reliably now
Continue to article

The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult, a new wealth report finds

Credit Suisse released its 2021 Global Wealth Report this month, which estimates the wealth of households around the world.
Continue to article

Daintree Rainforest Documentary in 4K | Australia Nature | Queensland | Original Documentary

Continue to article

Why Florida is paradise for space nerds

Artemis is a big deal at an already-booming time for the space industry, sending fans flocking to the Space Coast.
Continue to article

How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down

In a political environment where book-banning efforts are being used to drive voter sentiment, librarians find themselves on the front lines.
Continue to article