13 articles from SUNDAY 10.11.2019

Starwatch: Leonid shooting stars return for their annual visit

Meteor showers originated from comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle will be preceded by Taurids six days beforeOne of the year’s most dependable meteor showers is set to take place at the end of the week. The Leonids will peak in the hours between midnight and dawn on 18 November. They are so-called because they herald from a point in the constellation Leo – the lion. Known as the radiant, this point is...

How Did a Virus From the Atlantic Infect Mammals in the Pacific?

Sea otters and seals in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Alaska, are infected with a virus that once was seen only in animals in the Atlantic.A new study suggests that melting ice in the Arctic may be to blame -- and that climate change may help spread the disease to new areas and new animals.Tracey Goldstein, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, got curious when sea otters in...

You won’t find tomorrow’s blatherskites in the class divide | Kenan Malik

A new survey of England’s dialects is instead likely to shine a light on social tribes and generational differencesAre you a blatherskite? Do you have murfles? Are you frightened of Old Harry? In the 1950s, the Survey of English Dialects sent fieldworkers across England to track regional variations in everyday words. Blatherskites were gossips, murfles were freckles and Old Harry was a...

Can laboratories curb their addiction to plastic?

Research scientists have largely gone unnoticed as major users of unrecyclable material. Now some universities are helping them kick the habitScientific research is a largely ignored consumer of single-use plastics, with the biomedical sciences a particularly high-volume offender. Plastic petri dishes, bottles of various shapes and sizes, several types of glove, a dizzying array of pipettes and...