Dispatches

See Journeys

The awe-inspiring mantis shrimp. Photo by: Flickr/Silke Baron There is a long-standing puzzle about the wiring of the human eye: why was it wired backwards? The inside-out vertebrate retina has always been presented as an example of inefficient structure locked in by development and evolutionary history. Some recent research has…

Congo vs. Bonobo

In terms of untapped mineral reserves, The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is arguably the richest country in the world, with its estimated $24 trillion worth of natural resources. The DRC is a country of superlatives, with vast reserves of coltan, gold, cassiterite, and tin mined in eastern Congo,…

Cracking The Cod(ex)

The Voynich Manuscript has been called the world’s most mysterious medieval manuscript. It is an illustrated codex made of vellum, carbon-dated to the early 15th century. The manuscript is written in an unknown script and almost every page has a colorful drawing or diagram. Countless cryptographers, linguists, botanists,…

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