Amber Dance in Nature:
The Borg have landed — or, at least, researchers have discovered their counterparts here on Earth. Scientists analysing samples from muddy sites in the western United States have found novel DNA structures that seem to scavenge and ‘assimilate’ genes from microorganisms in their environment, much like the fictional Star Trek ‘Borg’ aliens who assimilate the knowledge and technology of other species. These extra-long DNA strands, which the scientists named in honour of the aliens, join a diverse collection of genetic structures — circular plasmids, for example — known as extrachromosomal elements (ECEs). Most microbes have one or two chromosomes that encode their primary genetic blueprint. But they can host, and often share between them, many distinct ECEs. These carry non-essential but useful genes, such as those for antibiotic resistance.
Borgs are a previously unknown, unique and “absolutely fascinating” type of ECE, says Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She and her colleagues describe their discovery of the structures in a preprint posted to the server bioRxiv1. The work is yet to be peer-reviewed.
Unlike anything seen before
Borgs are DNA structures “not like any that’s been seen before”, says Brett Baker, a microbiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Other scientists agree that the find is exciting, but have questioned whether Borgs really are unique, noting similarities between them and other large ECEs. In recent years “people have become used to surprises in the field of ECEs”, says Huang Li, a microbiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “However, the discovery of Borgs, which undoubtedly enriches the concept of ECEs, has fascinated many in the field.”
More here.
One morning a few weeks ago, I sent my friend a Proust text. It was a photo of a page from Swann’s Way, and it took several attempts for me to capture the near-page-length sentence in its entirety. Next to me, my 2-year-old daughter slowly guided a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth, noticing my struggle. “Daddy, what are you doing?” she asked. The answer: being insufferable. My friend’s response shortly thereafter confirmed this: “It’s too early for me to follow this sentence.”
Once upon a time, I decided to start answering the question “Where are you from?” with “The middle of the Pacific Ocean.” I never followed through, though I still think it’s a good answer. I have spent so much of my life bouncing back and forth between the United States and India that, for me, the concept of home is more like a stationary probability distribution — a phrase that I filched from a statistics paper once, and which is likely to make less sense to most people than “the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” After all, the latter at least counts as a place.
The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past 
In October 2018, 
Concerns were raised about the 2020 hurricane season even before it officially began, as above-average air and water temperatures in the Gulf signaled an elevated chance of supercharged storms. When Hurricane Laura struck the southwest coast of Louisiana late last August, it carried with it 150 mile-per-hour winds and a storm surge of roughly ten feet. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Louisiana since 1856, causing around $17.5 billion in damages and killing thirty-three. Six weeks later, the same area was hit by yet another powerful hurricane that dumped fifteen inches of rain onto the storm-ravaged city of Lake Charles. Recently, climate researchers looked at over ninety peer-reviewed scientific articles on tropical cyclones and concluded that anthropogenic global warming was—to no one’s surprise—making storms more powerful. Meanwhile, Louisiana continues to heat up, with cities throughout the state experiencing up to an extra month of extreme heat when compared to fifty years ago.
People who want to deplatform a speaker or deep-six a book love to point out that the First Amendment only applies to government. But socially and culturally, the notion that people have a right to say what they think and read what they want is much broader than that. That is why common dismissals—you can still get the book online, the speaker has plenty of other ways to express herself, books go out of print all the time—sound flip.
In any normal summer, Spain’s famous Playa de la Castilla – a perfect 20km (12 mile) long stretch of sand backed by the Doñana nature reserve and close to the resort of Matalascañas, Huelva – would have been covered by the footprints of visiting tourists. But in June 2020 with international flights banned due to Covid-19, the beach was uncharacteristically quiet. Two biologists – María Dolores Cobo and Ana Mateos – who were strolling along the peaceful beach, nonetheless found many footprints. These, however, were made by a very different kind of visitor.
Simon Torracinta in Boston Review:
Stewart travels through the north of England, across moors and meadows, up mountains and through cities and villages and along coastal paths. He also voyages into the inner lives of the Brontës, showing how external place shaped their internal landscapes, how the wild fuelled their imagination.
He published a few books that went mostly unnoticed, but there were rumors of a trunk in his room stuffed with his true life’s work. After his death in 1935, the trunk was discovered, brimming with notes and jottings on calling cards and envelopes, whatever paper appeared to be handy. They were authored not only by Pessoa but by a flock of his personas (“heteronyms,” he called them): a doctor, a classicist, a bisexual poet, a monk, a lovesick teenage girl. Among his writings was a sheaf of papers that would become his masterpiece: “The Book of Disquiet,” a mock confession in sly, despairing aphorisms and false starts — “The active life has always struck me as the least comfortable of suicides.” In total, Pessoa created dozens of heteronyms, most complete with biographies, bodies of work, reviews and correspondence. He was awed, and a little afraid of his mind, its “overabundance.” What relation did it bear to a family history of nervous instability?
It made headlines recently when the