Joseph Turow— Public attention to the voice industry has centered primarily on smart speakers. Dubbed “voice first” devices by marketers, these are cylinders (or more recently other shapes) that sometimes come with screens. Ask a question or make a request, and the devices can access a huge number of information
W.M. Adams and K.H. Redford— On Gough Island, a steep speck of land deep in the South Atlantic, giant mice eat albatross chicks as they sit on their nests. They are house mice, accidental arrivals on the ships of long-dead sealers. But they have lost their secretive, timid, mousy ways.
Patrick J. Lynch— The outstanding feature of the Middle Atlantic Coast is a segment of the world’s longest string of barrier islands, with the sounds and bays that separate these islands from the mainland Atlantic coast. The barrier islands of the Mid-Atlantic Coast are part of a series of sand
Peter F. Sale— Coral reefs are strewn across the tropical ocean like so many pearls from a broken necklace. Some are barely a few hundred meters from other reefs, but many are many kilometers from any other shallow water habitat. Yet nearly all the species that live on coral reefs
Martin Elvis— Changing your line of work late in your career is a refreshing thing to do. I worked for decades helping to decipher the mysteries of how giant black holes—the darkest things in the Universe—can be the engines of the brightest things in the Universe (quasars), making them visible
Peter E. Kukielski— Rosa sancta, also known as Rosa sancta Richard, Rosa richardii, Freya, Heilige Rose, and the Holy Rose of Abyssinia, is a species cross and is closely associated with the gallica class of roses. Rosa sancta Richard was described by Richard in 1848 in his Flora of Abyssinia under the name of Rosa sancta as it was observed
Michael R. Dove— The Pakistan Forest Service traditionally had distinct relations with two different rural clienteles. From one clientele, the peasantry, the Forest Service extracted fees for approved use of forest resources—grazing cattle and gathering fuelwood—and fines and bribes for unapproved uses. For the other clientele, the principal landlords in
David Western— Over the course of barely two centuries, subsistence herding and farming societies tied to rainfall and the seasons have coalesced into a global society and interwoven economy. Amboseli, situated beneath the rising mass of Kilimanjaro in Kenya, gives a snapshot of the last vestiges of the Neolithic Age
Lana Swartz— In2017 New Yorker comic, Olivia de Recat presents a series of hand-drawn Venmo transactions and decodes what they really mean. Venmo, currently the most widespread person-to-person payment app in the United States, allows individuals to pay their friends directly. According to reporting in the business press, Venmo is
Jonathan E. Hillman— In 1995, Mahathir revived a plan for a “pan-Asian” railway network. Versions of the idea have existed since the early 1900s, when British and French colonialists built some of the region’s first tracks and began drafting plans for more extensive networks. The concept resurfaced in an even