IdleTheory.info – Reclaiming Life

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

By cutting surveys of public health, the US government won’t be able to properly tackle problems ranging from drug addiction to food insecurity

Jacob, an 11-year-old lion, has defied expectations by surviving for years after losing a leg – now we know his success is down to an innovative hunting strategy

Archaeologists have compiled the most detailed map yet of roads throughout the Roman Empire in AD 150, totalling almost 300,000 kilometres in length

The battle to save the magnificent but endangered Amur tiger detailed in Jonathan Slaght’s Tigers Between Empires is an inspiring look at what collaboration across borders can achieve, finds Adam Weymouth

Many plants including cocoa, coffee and avocado cannot be gene-edited but a technique involving grafting could change that, opening the door to more productive and nutritious varieties

The identity of a skeleton buried under a Budapest convent has been confirmed as Béla of Macsó, a Hungarian royal murdered in a 13th-century power struggle, and archaeologists have pieced together how the attack unfolded

A planet is about to be destroyed by the collapse of a binary star system in Slow Gods, Claire North’s first venture into classic science fiction. Read it! says Emily H. Wilson

It is widely accepted that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, but now researchers say our measurements of the mysterious force driving that may be wrong and that the universe began to slow 1.5 billion years ago – but other scientists disagree

Using the Helios-1 quantum computer, researchers have used a record-breaking number of error-proof qubits to run the first and biggest quantum simulation of a model for perfect conductivity