What do strong local newspapers do? Well, past research has shown they increase voter turnout, reduce government corruption, make cities financially healthier, make citizens more knowledgable about politics and more likely to engage with local government, force local TV to raise its game, encourage split-ticket (and thus less uniformly partisan) voting, make elected officials more responsive and efficient, and bake the most delicious apple pies. Okay, not that last one.

With billions of hours of YouTube content viewed daily, this social media network is a key enabler for anti-vaxxers to espouse anti-vaccination sentiments.  According to a new study published in Vaccine on April 3, 2019, much of this content is meant to influence or reinforce public opinion on a variety of topics, including vaccines.

For years, the arrest and case has been kept under-wraps. Friday, a court sentenced Thomas White to 5 years and 4 months for his role in running a huge dark web drug marketplace.

What was once limited to small-scale side hustles has mushroomed into so-called essay mills on the Internet, becoming a global industry.

Space is the final frontier for understanding how extreme environments affect human physiology. Following twin astronauts, one of which spent a year-long mission on the International Space Station, Garrett-Bakelman et al. examined molecular and physiological traits that may be affected by time in space (see the Perspective by Löbrich and Jeggo). Sequencing the components of whole blood revealed that the length of telomeres, which is important to maintain in dividing cells and may be related to human aging, changed substantially during space flight and again upon return to Earth.

The Libro de los Epítomes was a catalogue for Hernando Colón’s 16th-century collection, which he intended to be the biggest in the world

To multiply two numbers by hand take a few steps but it's something we're taught in school. When dealing with big numbers, really big numbers, we need to a quicker way to do things.

A transparency tool on Facebook inadvertently provides a window into the confusing maze of companies you’ve never heard of who appear to have your data.

The failure of the landing highlighted the risks of a fast and cheap approach to space exploration.

Rainforest nations have opposed the creation of a new .amazon internet domain name. Why?

Homo luzonensis fossils found in Luzon island cave, dating back up to 67,000 years

He took refuge in Ecuador's London embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over an alleged sexual assault. The Met Police said he was arrested for failing to surrender to the court.

Social neuroscientists ask what happens at the level of neurons when you tell someone a story or a group watches movies

I’ve been collecting stories from people who feel as though their loved ones were changed by Fox News. They don’t have happy endings.

Trees talk and share resources right under our feet, using a fungal network nicknamed the "Wood Wide Web". Some plants use the system to support their offspring, while others hijack it to sabotage their rivals.

A network of eight radio telescopes around the world helped to record the image

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

Felicia had a job to do.

Images from the 1950s and ’60s have a better resolution than Google Earth

Sanitation workers in China say they are being forced to wear GPS trackers in the latest report detailing the nation’s growing dystopia. According to a local news source, the trackers were is…

For its third annual Distracted Driving Study, Zendrive uncovers a dangerous new category of distracted drivers: Phone Addicts.

A popular DNA-testing company seems to be targeting true crime fans with a new pitch to let them share their genetic information with law enforcement so cops can catch violent criminals.

Plastic bags only 1% of plastic in freshwater after sustained efforts to reduce their use

Environmentalist and human rights groups said on Friday they had started a lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands to force the energy firm to cut its reliance on fossil fuels. The groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, handed over a court summons to Shell at its headquarters in The Hague, demanding it stop extracting oil and gas and cut its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Falling prices and sunk costs mean that the reigning storage technology has a lasting lead.

What a week for Facebook. The news blitz began over the weekend, as the company responded to multiple recent controversies, from livestreaming to disappearing blog posts. Then on Wednesday, security researchers at UpGuard found that two different third-party apps left more than 540 million Facebook records unprotected in the cloud. On Friday, we reported that Facebook had been letting cybercrime groups operate in plain sight. It never ends.

In what seems like a broken record, Facebook is facing another scandal related to the transparency of its user data. The UpGuard cybersecurity firm reports that it uncovered two cases in which massive buckets of third-party Facebook app data were left exposed on the public internet. In one such case, a Mexico-based media company named Cultura Colectiva amassed 146 gigabytes of data with more than 540 million records. The records are said to include user comments, likes, reactions, account names, Facebook IDs and more.

"Facebook cannot be trusted. They are morally bankrupt pathological liars who enable genocide (Myanmar), facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions," NZ Privacy Commissioner John Edwards posted to Twitter last night, in his most pointed attack on the social network yet.

The creatures are not just incredibly clever, but also carnivorous, meaning a huge amount of wild fish will be caught to feed them, putting pressure on the ecosystem.

Karma's a bitch.