If you’re increasingly wary of committing to a show for fear that it’ll join the ranks of Netflix‘s cancelled shows just as you’re getting hooked, you’re not alone. And a new show, the young-adult drama Penelope, is trying to do something about it.
Penelope stars Megan Stott from Little Fires Everywhere as a disaffected 16-year-old girl who leaves her family and her life behind to forge a new existence in the wilderness, learning to live off the land alone. It was written during the pandemic, but when the creators attempted to get it commissioned nobody chose to make it. So they decided to go the indie route instead. The show was a big hit at the Sundance festival, and Netflix has now snapped up the US distribution rights to the first eight-episode season.
The first teaser for One Piece season 2 has landed, and it pretty much confirms the story the season is going to tell and which characters are going to appear in it.
The tease was a video uploaded to TikTok, in which Iñaki Godoy celebrated Monkey D. Luffy’s birthday with a cake that looks like a big ol’ candle. That cake had a candle on top, which was shaped like the number three – and that is almost certainly a very big hint about which story arc we’re going to see this time around.
Physical: 100 has developed something of a cult following, and it’s easy to see why. Netflix’s South Korean fitness bonanza marries bizarre concepts (pulling a boat up a slope, anyone?) with genuinely grueling physical tests to deliver compelling entertainment.
For those who haven’t seen it, the show starts with 100 contestants of all different shapes, sizes and genders before periodically whittling this number down to one “ultimate physique” through a series of tasks, or “quests”.
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Zhang Yongzhen, the first person to publicly release the genome sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19, was camping outside his laboratory.Credit: Dake Kang/AP via Alamy
Noted Chinese virologist Zhang Yongzhen appears to be back at work following a dispute that saw him sleeping in the street outside his own lab. According to social media posts on Zhang’s Weibo account, his group was given two days to relocate to a new lab that lacked sufficient biosafety controls. In 2020, Zhang and long-time collaborator Edward Holmes, a virologist in Australia, were first to publicly release the genome of SARS-CoV-2 — a choice credited as key to the swift development of COVID-19 vaccines. But Zhang’s research output has since dwindled, which Holmes blames on an effort to sideline Zhang for unauthorized sharing of data. “It is heartbreaking to watch,” he says. “It is unfathomable to me to have a scientist of that calibre sleeping outside his lab.”
A ‘challenge trial’ early in the COVID-19 pandemic that aimed to infect 35 volunteers on purpose to study treatments ended after none of them got sick, a paper detailing the results has revealed. Fourteen of the participants then caught the Omicron strain after being released from quarantine. The strains used in challenge trials are produced under stringent conditions — a process that can take months. This can put them well out-of-date compared to emerging variants that can overcome widespread immunity. “We need a challenge strain that’s more representative of what’s circulating in the community,” says vaccine scientist Anna Durbin.
India’s leading social-science research institute, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), is reeling after a January decision by the government — currently being challenged in court — banned it from taking money from international funders, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The tax authorities also levied the institution with a 10 crore rupees (US$1.2 million) bill.
In an opinion article, former CPR chief executive Yamini Aiyar, who stepped down in March, says this is part of a pattern of attacks on institutions conducting independent research. “The documented drop in academic freedom is part of a broader decline in India’s vibrant culture of public debate,” she writes. “At a juncture when critical feedback and effective consultation are required to secure the country’s long-term growth and prosperity… it has now become increasingly common for technocrats in government to seek to discredit researchers and suppress research.”
Scientists are racing to find out whether chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, one of the most celebrated new cancer treatments in decades, could be causing new malignancies. The US Food and Drug Administration received 33 reports of lymphomas among some 30,000 people who had been treated. It remains unclear how many, if any, of the new cancers came from the CAR T cells or from other therapies the patients had received. “Most cancer therapies can cause cancer. This is one of the paradoxes of our business,” says paediatric oncologist Crystal Mackall.
The Netflix series 3 Body Problem is a hit — but is the mind-bending tale of a group of alien-battling Oxford physicists good science? Nature asked Xavier Dumusque, a planetary scientist who has studied the three-star system Alpha Centauri, Younan Xia, a materials scientist who has worked with cutting-edge nanotechnologies and Matt Kenzie, a particle physicist and the scientific adviser for the show.
Like many regions, Africa faces challenges to infrastructure, institutions and ecosystems. “But the current circumstances also offer an opportunity for African nations,” argues agricultural economist Alfred Bizoza. “Despite — or perhaps because of — its challenges, Africa is already a hub for sustainable innovation.” He calls for ‘supported independence’ of science and innovation in the continent, with the aim of designing innovations that work for African researchers and African people.
The mystery of consciousness and the quirks of quantum physics are signs of a blind spot at the heart of science, write astronomer Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser and philosopher Evan Thompson in their new book of the same name. (Big Think | 6 min read — or read a review of the book in Science, 5 min read)
A couple of weeks ago, we told you (in a story about left- and right-handed molecules) that the drug thalidomide showed to tragic effect why it’s important to separate molecules’ mirror-image forms: one version is a sedative, the other causes congenital disabilities when taken during pregnancy.
While technically true — the different versions do have different effects — Editorial Director of the Physics & Chemistry Nature journals (and former editor of Nature Chemistry) Stuart Cantrill alerted us that the real-world implications have become something of a chemistry urban myth. “In the body, the two forms will interconvert,” notes Cantrill. “So even if you give the ‘safe’ mirror image form it will convert into the version that is not safe (well, you’ll get a 50:50 mixture) and biological studies confirm that it leads to embryonic defects just as if you gave the mixed versions in the first place.” The persistence of the tale was explored in detail in Nature Chemistry in 2010 by chemist Michelle Francl (who blew our minds in January with her revelation that the secret to a great cup of tea is a pinch of salt).
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If you’re a fan of historical dramas featuring quick wits and absolute… bad people, Prime Video‘s My Lady Jane looks like it should be at the top of your watch list. Inspired by the best-selling book of the same name, the new series is set in an alternative version of the Tudor world where Lady Jane Grey didn’t lose her head after just nine days on the throne.
It turns out that not being beheaded is a pretty good career move, but after Lady Jane finds herself crowned Queen of England, a move that is not universally popular, it doesn’t take long before ne’er-do-wells, ruffians and other scoundrels come for her crown and her head.
There’s good news for fans of William Gibson’s fictional AINeuromancer and Wednesday, the ongoing tales of Charles Addams’ creepy and kooky family. Both shows’ already impressive casts have just announced some equally impressive new additions.
First up, BAFTA award-nominated Callum Turner from Masters of the Airand The Boys in the Boat is going to be appearing in Neuromancer. Based on Gibson’s book of the same name, it’s a 10-part Apple TV Plus series following a largely broken top-tier hacker called Case (Turner). Case stumbles into a tangled web of electronic espionage and corporate skulduggery with suitably thrilling results, and the source novel won stacks of literary awards and helped define what would come to be known as cyberpunk.
When we watched the teaser trailer for Jennifer Lopez’s new sci-fi movie Atlas, we said that it looked like a cross between Terminator and The Creator with Neon Genesis Evangelion-like mechs thrown in for good measure. And now that a longer trailer has dropped, we’re thinking much the same.
The new Netflix movie looks very entertaining, with lots of big robot suits (similar to the powered exoskeletons you see in films like Edge of Tomorrow) and explosions – always a good thing unless you’re watching a period drama. It also has a “can we trust AI?” plot, which is very timely.
Fans of proper nail-biter flicks probably already know that Heart of the Hunter, the explosive conspiracy thriller from the streamer’s latest collaboration with South African filmmakers, is a huge hit on Netflix. At the time of writing, it’s number one of the English movies chart, racking up 11 million views and nearly 20 million viewing hours.
The movie tells the story of Zuko Khumalo, a man whose mission to save his family escalates into a battle to prevent a corrupt politician from becoming President, and features critically acclaimed character actor Bonko Khoza (Necktie Youth, Collision, The Woman King) in the lead role alongside a who’s who of iconic South African actors.
Albert Kim, the showrunner for Netflix’s live-action fantasy series Avatar: The Last Airbender, is moving on – and that means the show will enter its second season with its third showrunner in charge.
That may seem like a lot of showrunners for a show with only one season so far, but it was in development for a long time before it actually aired, with Netflix ordering it in 2018, six years before it finally made it to the screen.
3 Body Problem, the new Netflix series from the creators of Game of Thrones, is getting mixed reviews from viewers – but its creators are reportedly already preparing for a second season.
As we said in our review of the sci-fi series, Netflix is taking a big gamble with the show. The books by Liu Cixin that it’s based on are famously brain-melting, it takes some time to hit its stride, and it’s quite a hard sell to people who aren’t familiar with the source material. But it’s a show worth sticking with, and its creators say that things get better still in the as yet unconfirmed season two.
