Leading discussions about the global rules to regulate digital privacy and surveillance is a somewhat unusual role for a developing country to play. But Brazil had been doing just that for over a decade. But in 2014 Edward Snowden’s bombshell about the US National Security Agency’s digital surveillance activities included revelations that the agency had…
Venus has long played second fiddle to its redder, smaller, and more distant sibling. Given how inhospitable we’ve learned Venus to be, we’ve spent the majority of the last century pinning some of our biggest hopes of finding signs of extraterrestrial life on Mars. That all changed this week. On Monday it was announced that a peculiar gas called phosphine had been...
WELLCOME COLLECTION In the 1950s, Albert Sabin was searching for an improved polio vaccine. To that end, his lab infected the brains of mice, chimpanzees, and monkeys with the virus that causes the disease. They wanted to see if the pathogen would change and if weakened forms might arise. They eventually isolated versions of the polio virus that could still infect people but didn’t cause...