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Cases of cyclosporiasis might be slowing

Plus, mini drones of the future ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

August 21, 2026—Lettuce might be back on the menu, bees inspire drone navigation, and physicists are hard at work on nuclear clocks. Happy Friday, folks, Andrea will be back on Monday! —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor TODAY'S NEWS Brandon Bell/Getty Images The number of explosive diarrhea-causing cyclosporiasis cases seems to be lessening, the CDC reports. | 2 min read A rare tornado touched down in Long Island, New York last night, and a possible second one was in Queens. | 2 min read  This year's El Niño climate phenomenon, bringing warm weather to the tropical Pacific, will likely be the largest in living memory. | 2 min read  The U.S. is $40 trillion dollars in debt. Here are a few ways to imagine how huge that number is. | 2 min read There have been 22 human cases of West Nile virus this year across 32 states. Should we be worried? | 2 min read Anorexia nervosa is notoriously hard to treat. Some researchers have been testing if magic mushrooms can help. | 23 min podcast Calling an exoplanet “Earth-like” tends to be a misleading exaggeration, columnist Phil Plait laments. | 5 min read China’s solar development may have unintended consequences on bird diversity. | 2 min read TOP STORIES Bees memorize landmarks near home to find their way back. Darwin Fan/Getty Images Navigation, Bee-Style Some engineers really want to make tiny drones. (Why? I don’t want to think about it.) But the problem with making them smaller is that traditional navigation systems weigh them down. So researchers have taken some cues from bees to invent a new system called Bee-Nav. How it works: Bees keep track of the direction and speed of their movement, which roboticists call path integration. Because path integration is prone to accumulating measurement errors over time, the insects also rely on memorized landmarks to correct their course as they head back home. Bee-Nav mimics this process using a computer chip the size of a credit card and a minuscule omnidirectional camera. The camera takes pictures of the drone’s surroundings and establishes a “safe zone” it can always navigate back into using the images. Then, it uses path integration to venture farther out and retraces its steps upon return. As long as the hand-sized drone ends up back in the safe zone, it can navigate back to its dock. What the experts say: “What I find especially exciting is how little computation is needed,” says Sarah Bergbreiter, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in the study. Bee-Nav uses thousands of times less data than a traditional navigation system. “For the small-scale robots that my group and others work on, this is the kind of approach that makes serious outdoor deployments plausible,” Bergbreiter says. Ultra-Accurate Nuclear Clocks Atomic clocks observe the frequency at which atoms change energy states. But their timing is easily thrown off by stray magnetic and electric field interference. In hopes of more precise timekeeping and less noise, scientists are working on “nuclear clocks” that observe the change in energy state of a single neutron within a thorium 229 atom after it’s hit with an ultraviolet laser. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to protectively nestle these atoms in a nuclear clock—by putting them inside a crystal. In a new study, they figured out exactly where inside the crystal lattice is the best spot to place the atoms. How they did it: You can’t just put a thorium 229 atom anywhere in a crystal and expect its neutrons to be unaffected by electric and magnetic field interference. The researchers grew crystals with thorium 229 atoms inside them and found that if they targeted thorium 229 in a bad internal position, the crystal would have an uneven electric field and harm the clock’s timing. So they shot a laser at thorium atoms in the four available positions within the crystal and saw one position where the atom only responds to a single wavelength of light—making it perfect for a clock. What the experts say: Right now, it’s a race to make clocks that can beat the current standard’s precision. “I’m not going to give you a time scale on when we will beat the best atomic clocks,” says Thorsten Schumm, a physicist at the Vienna University of Technology, “but we will be better [than our current prototypes] by at least three orders of magnitude by the end of the year.”

SCIENCE QUIZ Have you been keeping up with this week's science news? Even if you have, today's science quiz might stump you. Try it for yourself! RECOMMENDED READS Every Friday in summer we're recommending a great, freshly published science (or science-ish) book. Tell us what you're reading, fill in your bingo card and happy reading! The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths, and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence by Kimon de Greef. Penguin Random House, Aug 04, 2026. The venomous Sonoran Desert Toad produces a psychedelic substance in its glands called 5-MeO-DMT, also known as “the God molecule” because smoking it induces powerful transcendental experiences. The psychedelics community has embraced “smoking toad” as a sacred practice, approved of by the Seri people Indigenous to northeast Mexico. But there has been simmering criticism of some of its most prominent practioners, leading author Kimon de Greef to dig deeper into assumptions about the origin of toad smoking, the burgeoning industry behind it and the ecological impact of the practice. This sharp, occasionally shocking story gives readers first-hand access to some of the biggest controversies (and personalities) in the toad world. MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK How psilocybin alters consciousness to create a sense of ‘oneness’ | 3 min read 388 years ago Galileo worked out why human giants can’t exist—and explained a law of physics | 7 min read What happens when Betelgeuse blows its top? | 5 min read This month, I really enjoyed reading The Ego Trip for Scientific American's Summer Reading Challenge. As science-lovers, I think we all crave new discoveries, especially when they can tell us something about ourselves or possibly even heal us. But there can always be too much of a good thing—risky journeys to discover the truth (psychedelic or otherwise) don’t mean much if they aren’t taken with care. The reading challenge is almost over, and I'm so glad I participated! Enter to win exclusive prizes before it’s done. You can reach out any time with questions and comments: newsletters@sciam.com. —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor

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Week in Science: What really happened on Easter Island

Plus, why solar is taking over                    

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August 21—Historians have claimed that Easter Island's Indigenous population was to blame for its decline. But new research has found that theory doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Plus, how our brains are wired for storytelling, and why solar energy is becoming a global powerhouse. Enjoy our entire September issue here! Do you know what happened in science this week? Take our Friday quiz to test your knowledge and find out. —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor How are you liking this newsletter? Email newsletters@sciam.com anytime.

Top Stories

How psilocybin alters consciousness to create a sense of ‘oneness’ Psychedelics can create a new “hidden order” in brain activity that could explain how these drugs alter our sense of self Allison Parshall

What really happened on Easter Island? For decades, an influential theory blamed the Rapanui for their own downfall—a story made famous by Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. New evidence tells a different tale Michael Marshall

Travel with Scientific American Discover the Wonder: The Monarch Butterfly Migration Reservations now open! Take an extraordinary trip to the Mexican mountains to witness the annual monarch butterfly migration. See oyamel fir forests transformed into living tapestries with Chief Newsletter Editor Andrea Gawrylewski as your guide. Learn More

Why solar power is taking over the world Here are four reasons solar energy has seen a meteoric rise in recent years Stephanie Pappas

What happens when Betelgeuse blows its top? Betelgeuse, the sky’s most famous red supergiant, is well studied but poorly understood Phil Plait

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Why your brain turns life into stories Neuroscience is revealing how our brains are wired for narrative Ingrid Wickelgren

388 years ago Galileo worked out why human giants can’t exist—and explained a law of physics Giants have featured in stories for millennia, but the reason why they don’t exist helps explain the natural world Joel David Hamkins, The MIT Press Reader

Solid-state batteries have reached a make-or-break moment Two American companies are pursuing rival manufacturing strategies for these long-promised cells in an industry China dominates Alex Pasternack

Why parabolas are crucial to cryptography Cryptographers use points along a curve to build tough codes Manon Bischoff

Super agers have an immune system superpower Could this secret cellular weapon be the key to longevity? Mary Randolph

AI decodes the mathematical ‘fingerprints’ of famous jazz musicians, from Chick Corea to Thelonious Monk Music and math often come together in ways we don’t expect Adam Kovac

Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself A groundbreaking study hints at a hazy boundary between “life” and “non-life,” as well as two distinct origins of biology on Earth Philip Ball

Why it may be impossible to eradicate feral hogs The U.S. is spending millions to try to control feral hogs, but are those efforts in vain? Chris Boyer, Aaron Smith, Eunchun Park, The Conversation US

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