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What’s the matter with microplastics?
Microscopic specks of plastic — called microplastics — are everywhere, from the deep oceans and Antarctic ice to table salt and beer. Researchers estimate that the worst-hit people might be ingesting around the mass of a credit card’s worth of microplastic each year. But we don’t know whether this is dangerous. Researchers are grappling with the challenge of studying the possible health effects of microplastics, which come in all shapes, sizes and chemical compositions.
Arabian structures predate the pyramids
More than 1,000 ancient stone structures dating back 7,000 years have been located in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia, more than twice the number thought to exist in the area. Mustatil monuments — named after the Arabic word for rectangle — were first identified in the 1970s, but received little academic attention at the time. The structures are between 20 and 600 metres long and might have been used for rituals. If so, the area is the oldest large-scale ritual landscape in the world, predating both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids by thousands of years.
Flu numbers plummet worldwide
Influenza cases have dropped to rock-bottom levels — thanks, epidemiologists think, to the public-health measures taken to keep COVID-19 from spreading. For example, in the United States, there were about 600 deaths from influenza during the 2020–21 flu season, compared with 22,000 in the year before. “There’s just no flu circulating,” says physician and vaccinologist Greg Poland. The downside: fewer cases make it harder to plan the vaccine for next year’s flu season. And toddlers who evade a mild case of flu now could be more susceptible to the disease later in life, depending on what strains circulate in the future.
Scientific American | 3 min read
Features & opinion
AI must learn to find common ground
To help humanity solve fundamental problems of cooperation, scientists need to recognize artificial intelligence as deeply social, argue six researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). They outline the four ways that cooperative intelligence can help achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
Undergraduates face curtailed opportunities
The pandemic has caused many of the university laboratories and government programmes that benefit aspiring researchers to be cancelled or reduced in size. Five undergraduates share how they dealt with reduced opportunities and increased competition.