The headline says it all! Let’s dive right in. Costume Contest We had such fun with our Fanart Contest that we want to honor another section of the Dresden fandom’s creatives: cosplayers and cosplay photographers! Read all the rules, then submit your Cosplay Contest entries to yearofdresden@gmail.com by May 12th. Coloring Pages Running low on [...]

We try to stick to our “no more than once a week” posting pattern out of respect for your overstuffed inboxes, but I think you’ll see why we had to deviate. Jim’s publisher has revealed Chris McGrath’s gorgeous cover art for the second of the two Dresden novels coming out this year, Battle Ground! Battle [...]

via http://grainedit.com/2009/02/09/vintage-cassette-tape-covers/

The covid-19 pandemic has led to rushed guidelines for doctors making treatment decisions, and has encouraged more people to make advance decisions on CPR and ventilation

The UK government says its coronavirus strategies are based on science, but the scientific advice it has received won’t be made public until after the pandemic

Coronavirus will overshadow Earth Day's golden anniversary, but the movement's successes are worth celebrating, says Gary Paul Nabhan

The incredible benefits of strength training are only just becoming apparent. That's good timing, when working out indoors is beneficial to everyone's health

Mars could have had an ancient ocean in its northern hemisphere, and a large raft of volcanic rock may have floated across it to settle into mounds we can see today

Strange orbits of distant space rocks have been used to infer that the solar system has an unseen ninth planet, but those orbits may be less strange than we thought, meaning there is no need for a new planet

Thousands of babies were born with severe brain damage after the 2015 Zika outbreak. New findings could tell us which therapies could help them most

Artificial intelligence can tell whether a human or a bot is posting on Twitter based on how regularly they post and how much they reply to others, which could help identify fake accounts

The US Navy is researching how to use lasers to form plasma into 2D or 3D infrared images of aeroplanes that can distract heat-seeking missiles

The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was caused by heavy rains – suggesting that extreme weather from climate change could lead to more eruptions

Rocks from a 3.2-billion-year-old formation in Australia show changes in the direction of their magnetism over time that suggest plate tectonics started earlier than we thought

A cheap, lightweight smartphone-heated device can test for DNA in blood, urine and other samples in a fraction of the time it takes to test in a lab

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out

Bamboo is a renewable material that when microwaved becomes stronger by weight than steel or concrete – which could make it ideal for constructing buildings, cars and planes

Black paint usually absorbs heat, but a new two-layer polymer paint reflects infrared light and keeps objects 16°C cooler, which could help make buildings more energy efficient

Srinivisa Ramanujan’s ideas seemed to come from a parallel universe and mathematicians are still getting to grips with them today, say Ken Ono and Robert Schneider

The membership of the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has so far been kept secret, but a list of names will soon be published, the UK's chief scientific adviser has said

In a small trial, implanting electrodes into the brain helped women with severe anorexia gain weight and feel less anxious and depressed

The Pine Island glacier has three tipping points that could lead to the collapse of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, potentially raising sea levels by 3 metres over centuries

Robots made of 3D-printed muscle and rat spines could help us understand conditions like motor neurone disease and the technique may eventually be used to build prosthetic devices

The ongoing spread of bluetongue virus among European farm animals may have started when a cow was inseminated with infected bull semen stored from an earlier outbreak

A well-preserved fossilised tail from Spinosaurus suggests this massive dinosaur may have been able to propel itself and hunt for prey in the water

Looking at how many more people are dying than usual gives an idea of the coronavirus pandemic’s true effect – and suggests a far higher death toll in many countries

A robot that uses artificial intelligence to find and remove weeds could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides

We are already seeing the pandemic's effects on mental health, and we need to act urgently to avoid a full-blown crisis, says Sam Howells  

Over half the world’s wild tigers now live 5 kilometres from a road, and infrastructure projects planned in Asia could fragment their habitat further

A number of studies have found a link between air pollution and increased covid-19 deaths, but it isn't clear why. Both attack the lungs, but it could just be that more people live in polluted areas

The UK government has refused to say how many covid-19 contact tracers it has employed, with less than three weeks to go until its target of recruiting 18,000 of them by mid-May

The remains of three slaves found in Mexico contain the earliest signs of the hepatitis B virus and yaws bacteria in the Americas, suggesting transatlantic slavery introduced these diseases

Healthcare systems need to prepare for the extensive physiotherapy and mental rehabilitation that people put on ventilators for covid-19 will need as they recover

NASA has awarded $967 million to three space flight companies – Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX – to build lunar landers that will be part of the Artemis programme to send humans to the moon by 2024

The Tully Monster is a famously odd 300-million-year-old fossil that looks like an alien, but a new analysis suggests it was a backboned animal like a hagfish or lamprey

Weird blasts of radio waves from space called fast radio bursts have been baffling astronomers since they were discovered, but after finding one in our galaxy we may finally know what creates them

SpaceX’s first crewed launch is planned for 27 May and will be run from a mission control with desks set six feet apart to comply with social distancing protocols

A fresh look at the world’s oldest religious texts suggests ancient Egyptians saw the sky as a water-filled iron container from which chunks fell to Earth as meteorites

People with rheumatoid arthritis often take medicines that can have damaging side-effects, but a system that uses red light to deliver drugs exactly where they are needed could help

China just tested its biggest rocket yet, along with a new capsule designed to carry humans to its planned space station, the moon and beyond

We’ve found a 200-metre cliff in Mars's Hellas basin, the first evidence of a river that flowed on the planet for more than 100,000 years

Astronomers found a star that appeared to be orbiting nothing at all – but it’s actually the closest black hole ever at just 1000 light years away

Amid the global coronavirus outbreak, a second epidemic of preliminary, unverified and misinterpreted research has broken out. Can it be fixed?

A small increase in water temperature near a Japanese nuclear power plant allowed tropical fish to colonise the area, suggesting global warming will drastically alter some marine ecosystems

The leading hypothesis for how the moon formed involves a collision between a Mars-sized object and Earth that would have boiled away elements like carbon, making its discovery on the moon a mystery

Many ancient monuments are claimed to be aligned to celestial phenomena, but we now have the first statistical evidence this is the case for the Egyptian pyramids

I’m back from my doctor’s visit! It was nothing but good news. The outside walls of the clinic are covered with swarms of chironomid midges! Everywhere I looked, there they were, clinging to the brickwork. This is one big buffet for spiders that I’ll have to check again later, but I didn’t see many today […]

Milo Yawannapissoff and Michelle Malkin have been collaborating, and the results are even more awful than you can probably imagine. They decided to work together to create an “America First” reading list for their followers. Just from their choice of subject you can tell it’s going to be a collection of racists’ greatest hits. Milo […]

Like Minneapolis, the city of Mississauga is allowing mosques to broadcast the call to prayer during Ramadan, which seems reasonable, since 12% of the population is Muslim. The only problem is that some people are objecting, for bogus reasons. An open letter attached to three petitions, two of them hosted on Change.org, calls on Mississauga […]

Currently making the rounds: I was suspicious, though. It’s too good to be true. So I snooped about, and found the original on the ADL website. OK, now, really — who thought they needed to edit the original sign to make it less evil and more obviously stupid? That was a waste of effort. Just […]