Fungi’s Many Life-Changing Uses

While there are 144,000 discovered species of fungi on the planet, there could be many more—millions more, in fact. But finding fungi and sorting out whether or not they contain any useful chemical compounds comes down to chance. The serendipity, scientists argue, is what led to great discoveries like penicillin—so hope for similar-level finds persists. Recent tests may have uncovered compounds that can help create …

This 2.4-Million-Year-Old Discovery Alters Human History

The discovery of 2.4-million-year-old stone tools in north Africa have—yet again—altered the human origin story. “The evidence from Algeria has changed [our] earlier view regarding East Africa [as] being the cradle of humankind. Actually, the entire Africa was the cradle of humankind,” Mohamed Sahnouni, an archaeologist at Spain’s National Research Center for Human Evolution, says. Humanity’s distant cousin, the hominin, moved north through (and evolved and developed …

This Smart Dress Sheds Light on Harassment and Groping

For a project highlighting everyday harassment, Ogilvy and Schweppes created touch-sensitive dresses that reveal how often women are groped at clubs in Brazil. The sensor-embedded dress, made for the The Dress for Respect project, also measures pressure of each touch. During the experiment, three women wore the dresses and were touched 157 times in just four hours, with researchers tracking it all in real-time. Heat-sensors identified the …