Humans

From concrete dinosaurs to human evolution, exquisite plants to space travel, we pick the best non-fiction to give to those you love this year

Humans

30 November 2022

By Simon Ings
Mikhail Mikheev/EyeEm
TRAWLING through the year’s science books is a good way to restore perspective. They tackle everything from imagining the new world that emerged after the dinosaurs were wiped out to understanding our own place in nature by exploring the woods, and from extending our senses to the value of emotions. Enjoy our selection: many of our picks were reviewed in these pages, but they are all terrific reads and will make great gifts.

From dinosaurs to plants
It is just as well that the world is full of surprises because the human appetite for … More

Uncertainty and crisis are key to this year’s best sci-fi offerings, from Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Librarian to Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea

Humans

30 November 2022

By Sally Adee
Shutterstock/Vasilyev Alexandr
EVERY era of science fiction reflects its times. Iconic 1950s sci-fi was all lone male heroes and alien encounters. In 2022, uncertainty and fluidity rule, as we struggle to find a way out of a polycrisis of our own making, armed only with hope. Buckle up for the year’s best sci-fi.

“We already believed in the infinite web, so why not hard-wire an eye to each of its strands?” And that is how a fascist AI called New Dawn takes over in Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Librarian (Harper Collins, pictured above). … More

New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

Humans

23 November 2022

TrollJallo Faber/Netflix
Watch
Troll follows a ragtag group of heroes who set out to save Oslo from an ancient threat (pictured above). Delayed by covid-19, this is the new film from Roar Uthaug, director of disaster movie The Wave. Airs on Netflix from 1 December.

Read
Changing How We Choose is possible, says neuroscientist A. David Redish. Drawing on research in behavioural economics, sociology and neuroscience, he argues that there is a “new science of morality”. On sale from 6 December.
MattLphotography/Alamy
Visit
The Science … More

The threat of climate change permeates this visually stunning, memorable film about a couple living through drought in the Bolivian highlands

Humans

23 November 2022

By Elle Hunt
Utama is visually stunning, with dramatic shots of the arid horizonConic
Utama
Alejandro Loayza Grisi
On limited release in cinemas
LIFE in the highlands of Bolivia, more than 3500 metres above sea level, has always been at the mercy of the elements.
Virginio and Sisa have lived on the Andean plateau of western Bolivia all their lives, in a modest mud house without electricity or running water, tending to livestock and growing crops in one of the most exposed environments on Earth.
It is a precarious existence, but with many decades … More

You won’t need to make a flour roux for your macaroni cheese if you cook your pasta in milk rather than water, says Sam Wong

Humans

23 November 2022

By Sam Wong
Shutterstock/foodstck
CHEESE sauce is one of the first things I remember learning to cook as a child. You melt butter in a pan, whisk in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Then, gradually add the milk, whisking vigorously to avoid lumps. Simmer until it thickens, then mix in the cheese.
I must have made macaroni cheese this way dozens of times, but I might never do so again since learning of an ingenious shortcut.
Before I get to that, let’s consider why we need flour in a cheese sauce in the first place. The starch in flour plays two important roles here. One is to thicken … More

The hunt for the prehistoric mother tongue that gave rise to dozens of the languages we speak today reminds us of the scientific case for international identity

Humans

| Leader

23 November 2022

Shutterstock/ivosar
WHEN it comes to communicating and connecting with others, language is the most important tool we have. But it isn’t always a unifying force. A survey of people in 14 high-income countries, for example, found that language was considered by far the most critical factor in defining national identity, which suggests we tend to think people who don’t speak “our national language” may not belong.
The reconstruction of prehistoric languages offers an intriguing antidote to this way of thinking. As we explore in a feature this week, “The hunt for the lost ancestral language of Europe and southern Asia“, many of the world’s tongues share … More

We’ve long known there was an ancient language that gave rise to English, Bengali and dozens of other tongues – now we’re on the brink of working out where Proto-Indo-European was spoken

Humans

23 November 2022

By Andrea Valentino
Andy Smith
MOTHER. There can scarcely be a more emotive word in the English language. We can imagine children howling it as they wake from nightmares, and centenarians whispering it on their death beds. A 2004 survey proclaimed it the most beautiful word in English, and artists have evoked it in countless poems and plays. Yet even though it can conjure home and hearth in a scant two syllables, mother is perhaps most remarkable for its deluge of cousins. From Dutch (moeder) to Czech (matka) to Bengali (ma), dozens of languages have words that share a common root with mother, tying English to a cobweb of tongues that straddles almost every continent.
Human societies can’t exist without language, and no language family has shaped our world as much as Indo-European. It boasts well over 3 billion speakers, or an estimated 46 per cent of everyone on Earth. From the moment this language family was recognised, scholars have been searching for the answer to a weighty question. Who spoke the Indo-European mother tongue – dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) – that splintered into the hundreds of daughters we hear today?
The quest has thrilled and frustrated experts for centuries, with the evidence sometimes pointing in opposing directions. Yet the field is far from deadlocked. With the power of DNA at their heels, geneticists are making new claims about PIE, a language that may predate civilisation. Meanwhile, linguistic studies now suggest we can trace the roots of Indo-European languages even further back than PIE, to the world that existed shortly after farming took hold in south-west Asia. Not that any of this is straightforward – or without controversy.
The … More

The chromosome may contain regions that promote their DNA’s spread by killing sperm that carry Y chromosomes. However, Y chromosomes may have evolved counter mechanisms over time

Humans

23 November 2022

By Michael Le Page
Some modern humans that had not long left Africa may have evolved an X chromosome that carried “selfish” DNASCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Around 50,000 years ago, a new X chromosome appears to have been introduced into modern humans that had not long left Africa.
There was probably exceptionally strong selection for parts of this chromosome because, today, most people of less-recent African ancestry have inherited those regions.
Kasper Munch Terkelsen at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the research, thinks these regions may contain bits of so-called selfish DNA that promote their … More