Astronomy and Space:
Sun’s Gravity Could Power Interstellar Video Streaming (New Scientist)
How Can Humans Clean Up Our Space Junk? (The Verge)
How to Poop Like an Astronaut (The Verge)
Venus Revisited (Astronomy Magazine)
Brown Dwarfs: The Little Stars That Couldn’t (Astronomy Magazine)
FACEOFF! The Moon’s Oddly Different Sides (Astronomy Magazine)
‘Lost’ Sighting of Brightest Supernova Found in Ancient Text (National Geographic)
Sealing wax and string? — A group of students in Germany hope to build a cut-price planet-hunter (The Economist)
Astrophile: Big Blue Star is an X-Ray Oddball (New Scientist)
Physics and Materials:
Detection of Ghostly Particles Could Unmask Illicit Nuclear Weapons (Scientific American)
Mystery particle could revolutionize personal electronics (Discovery News via i09)
Quantum Dropleton: Weird New Particle Acts Like Liquid (Livescience.com)
27 Dimensions! Physicists See Photons in New Light (Livescience.com)
Proton Radius Is Smaller Than Physicists Had Thought, New Research Shows (Livescience.com via HuffPo)
The ‘Unparticle’ May Lurk In Earth’s Mantle (Livescience.com via NBC News)
Technology:
Should Apple iPhone X Trust Facial Recognition for Security? (Scientific American)
World’s Most Powerful Collider Taps AI to Expose Hack Attacks (Scientific American)
How a Machine Learns Prejudice (Scientific American)
Why It’s So Hard for the CIA to Hack Your Phone (Tom’s Guide)
How ‘Anonymous’ Shopping Data Reveals Your Identity (Tom’s Guide)
How You Can Hide Your Smartphone Data from Thieves—and the Cops (Scientific American)
How Ceramics Could Prevent Nuclear Disaster (PopSci)
Nuclear Reactor Powered By Spent Fuel (Discovery News)
Many Sheriff’s Deputies Unaware of Massive Hacktivist Data Breach (archived from Technewsdaily.com)
Environment:
Shell Shock — A mysterious ailment threatens Maine’s lobster fishery (The Economist)
Alternative Source of Tire Rubber Gains Traction — With the tropical rubber tree under threat from climate change and disease, tire manufacturers are reviving efforts to produce latex from a desert shrub (Scientific American)
Mixing Seawater and Nuke Fuel: Still Murky (Discovery News via NBC)
Reducing the barnacle bill — Ships’ hulls are kept clean using poisonous chemicals, but a number of cleaner alternatives are being pursued (The Economist)
Waters of change — An accidental experiment in America shows how evolution happens (The Economist)
Living Things and the Brain:
Origin of Life Story May Have Found its Missing Link (Livescience.com)
Consciousness-Raising: Kick-Starting the Brain’s Dopamine System May Revive Some Vegetative Patients (Scientific American)
Tissue.prn: Desktop Printer Technology Used to Lay Down Regenerated Skin Cells to Treat Burns in Mice (Scientific American)
Could Genetic Diseases Be Cured in the Womb? (Livescience.com)
Other Stuff That Was Just Plain Interesting:
First Principals – Beatles or Stones? Statistical analysis of music reveals the truth about its periods of revolution (The Economist)
‘Crackpot’ Theory of Everything Reveals Dark Side of Peer Review (Livescience.com)
Traveler's Tales 