14 articles from SATURDAY 11.6.2022

A 1,200-mile road-trip and no baby formula to be found. This is a nightmare | Anna Gazmarian

Expired products, cow milk, homemade formula – desperate parents are trying anything and everything to keep our babies fedI heard warnings about the formula shortage shortly after the mask mandate lifted in my town in North Carolina. My family was thrilled that life appeared to be going back to a semblance of normalcy, that my eight-month-old daughter could finally see people’s faces in...

Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

Meet the footballing bees, optimistic pigs and alien-like octopuses that are shaking up how we think about mindsHow do you spot an optimistic pig? This isn’t the setup for a punchline; the question is genuine, and in the answer lies much that is revealing about our attitudes to other minds – to minds, that is, that are not human. If the notion of an optimistic (or for that matter a...

Orgasm gap: how Hollywood and science neglected female pleasure

Emma Thompson is right – more women are missing out on orgasms. Why?Hollywood sex scenes tend to follow a predictable formula: hot, passionate and rarely anything short of euphoric. So the basis of Emma Thompson’s new film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, in which she plays a widowed teacher who hires a male escort in the hope of having her first orgasm late in life, is seen as truly...

Research reveals the science behind this plant's blue berries

On a beautiful fall day in 2019, Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong was walking down Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado when something caught her eye: a small, particularly shiny blue fruit, on a shrub known as Lantana strigocamara. While its tiny clusters of pink, yellow and orange flowers and blue berries commonly adorn the pedestrian mall in spring, city workers were ripping these common Lantanas out to...