”In two blows to church-state separation, Justices Breyer and Kagan joined the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in granting even more preferential treatment to religious bodies. In one case, the court gave the green light to religious employers to apply the “ministerial exemption” to pretty much any employee; a teacher is a coach is …
“If I wanted to be buried so that I was eventually fossilised, for possible discovery in the far future, where would be the best location on Earth to do this?” (Jonathan Wallace, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK) If your aim is to be fossilised after you die, I would suggest that you ask your relatives to sink …
Continue reading ‘A weird question to the New Scientist, plus two answers’ »
The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, a massive, multi-billion loan program designed to keep small businesses afloat and retain jobs as part of the CARES Act stimulus package, got a lot of heat for its seemingly opaque application and approval process when it debuted back in March. Now, as reports emerge of multi-million dollar handouts …
Milan, Italy Scientific analysis of sewage samples has shown that the novel coronavirus was present in both Milan and Turin by mid-December, more than two months before Italy’s first case was diagnosed in Codogno, southeast of Milan, on 20 February. Covid-19 patients are believed to shed the virus in their faeces from the time they …
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Tiny pieces of plastic that pollute the environment can be produced by simply opening a plastic bottle or tearing a food wrapper. Microplastics are between 0.001 and 5 millimetres in size and are usually either produced directly, or form when large plastic debris breaks up. We now know that millions of tonnes of microplastics are …
