Science

Pamela Klassen measures hospitals’ sacred dimensions

Jon Turney on the generator of the AC power grid

Lewis Dartnell regrets that a discussion of extreme life forms focuses on faint possibility rather than wondrous reality

Averil Macdonald on a US system of collaborative learning in which facilitator students help their peers to learn

Euan Clarkson is inspired by a detailed history and guide to the richest cluster of fossilised remains

Unsolicited emails can be a costly nuisance, says John Gilbey

Simon Underdown discusses an evolutionary counterfactual

Michelle Harvey agrees with inspiring advice to young science researchers to never forget what initially attracted them to the discipline

Tim Birkhead on the first comprehensive documenter of North American birds

Tristan Bekinschtein recommends a challenge to our notions of consciousness and cognition

Margaret Weitekamp on a historical study of the relationship between religion and spaceflight

Eric Michael Johnson reviews the argument that human moral feelings have been shaped by natural selection

Marilyn Young on the harrowing history of a chemical used to kill hundreds of thousands of people

Howard Segal pieces together the fascinating history of a key innovation in US manufacturing

Camilla Power enjoys a demolition of prelapsarian pseudoscience

Luciana Astiz on how seismology evolved from the combined observations of scientists and citizens

Steve Redhead takes a byte from a fascinating but flawed analysis

Isabelle Szmigin on how big companies sustain their profits first, and the environment second

Deborah Bowman praises the compassion and logic offered in deciding outcomes for sick children

Steve Yearley assesses a timely critique of controversial plans to manage climate change

Tara Brabazon on the hypocrisy of digital utopianism

David Green on the risks and rewards of medical progress

Steve Redhead on how the increasing sophistication of military technology affects modern warfare

Jules Pretty agrees that, for sustainable living, people need to feel a connection with the natural world

Atsushi Senju discusses the strange case of Japanese ‘social withdrawal’

John Gilbey on how the geeks inherited cyberspace

Steven Schwartz is grateful for advice on how to be happily retired

Fear of too much information has taken a bludgeoning but survives, discovers Andy Field

Virginia Trimble on the hidden forces in the Cosmos

Madeline Muntersbjorn reviews a guide to the oeuvres of a mathematical genius

Graham Farmelo applauds a tribute to the technological experts who helped the Allies win the Second World War

Jon Turney on future-facing researchers Gerard O’Neill and Eric Drexler

Vike Martina Plock on literary echoes of relativity’s shockwaves

Britta Martens on a lucid look at 19th-century poets’ engagement with science of the mind

Biancamaria Fontana admires the courage of two women who dared to enter scientific circles

Richard J. Evans admires exhaustive coverage of an ancient killer that threatens a major comeback

Steve Yearley weighs claims that environmental policies sweep emissions under a Chinese rug

Sergio Sismondo on a critical exploration of a new, lucrative model for public well-being