The myth of Rasputin, the Mad Monk, is well-known: He was a scheming sexual predator who insinuated himself into court life with devastating effects on Russia’s royal family. The reality — what we know of it — is much more nuanced. Most of what we know about Rasputin is thanks to Douglas Smith, historian and translator, who in 2016 published an exhaustively researched biography, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. According to Smith, if the Rasputin you know is the ch ...read more

Lions may be the kings of the jungle, but they can face threats themselves – especially lion cubs. Young lions are often vulnerable to male lions from other coalitions that can kill clubs so they can mate with the female lions. Spotted hyenas and other large carnivores also present a threat to lion cubs.New research in a study published recently in the Journal of Animal Ecology, revealed that male lions have a certain way of defending their territory from danger – from either rival male coal ...read more

In March of 1942, the U.S. was only a few months into the Second World War. Already, German submarines lurked near the Atlantic coast, hunting for supply freighters and battleships. Late in the month, a U-71 detected the Dixie Arrow, an oil tanker carrying more than 86,000 barrels of crude oil from Texas to New Jersey.The submarine fired two torpedoes at the target. Within a minute, the tanker was ablaze and sinking. Twenty-two crew members made it to safety; 11 died in the attack.The tanker san ...read more

On a Wednesday morning in late January 1896, at a small light bulb factory in Chicago, a middle-aged woman named Rose Lee found herself at the heart of a groundbreaking medical endeavor. With an X-ray tube positioned above the tumor in her left breast, Lee was treated with a torrent of high-energy particles that penetrated into the malignant mass.“And so,” as her treating clinician later wrote, “without the blaring of trumpets or the beating of drums, X-ray therapy was born.”Radiation th ...read more

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And he’s still bad at finding his way around.The world is full of people like Uttal — and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists some ...read more

If space systems such as GPS were hacked and knocked offline, much of the world would instantly be returned to the communications and navigation technologies of the 1950s. Yet space cybersecurity is largely invisible to the public at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.Cyberattacks on satellites have occurred since the 1980s, but the global wake-up alarm went off only a couple of years ago. An hour before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, its government operatives hacked Vi ...read more

Drive In movies are few and far between, but the summer blockbuster lives on. In this newsletter, check out our selection of summer citizen science projects paired with the films you’ll want to watch alongside them.Girls Night InFor the aptly named Eat Popcorn for Science project, you'll eat popcorn and watch a movie while contributing to important medical research (Credit: yousafbhutta via Pixabay)You can contribute to scientific research by inviting your friends, or science-curious pet, to w ...read more

Fatal attractions are a standard movie plot line, but they also occur in nature, with much more serious consequences. As a conservation biologist, I’ve seen them play out in some of Earth’s most remote locations, from the Gobi Desert to the Himalayan Highlands.In these locales, pastoralist communities graze camels, yaks and other livestock across wide ranges of land. The problem is that often these animals’ wild relatives live nearby, and huge, testosterone-driven wild males may try to mat ...read more

Only about 600 people have ever traveled to space. The vast majority of astronauts over the past six decades have been middle-aged men on short-duration missions of fewer than 20 days.Today, with private, commercial and multinational spaceflight providers and flyers entering the market, we are witnessing a new era of human spaceflight. Missions have ranged from minutes, hours and days to months.As humanity looks ahead to returning to the Moon over the coming decade, space exploration missions wi ...read more

A paralyzed Superman rose from a wheelchair and walked, during a 2000 Super Bowl commercial. The advertisement drew criticism, because, to some, it promised false hope. The ad’s star, Christopher Reeve — famous for playing the caped superhero in a series of movies — was rendered quadriplegic in a 1995 horse-riding accident. The actor turned activist pushed for more research funding in general, and an end to a ban on embryonic stem cell research in particular.Reeve, who died in 2004, would ...read more