Monkeys and apes are considered edible game in many parts of Africa. As Africans have emigrated to other parts of the world, some have retained their love of this so-called bushmeat. A new study now finds that even when smoked, meat from nonhuman primates — from chimps to monkeys — can host potentially dangerous viruses. Smuggled imports confiscated at U.S. airports provided the samples tested in this investigation.

Games such as chess have long been mastered by thinking machines. But weightier intellectual feats, such as deducing the laws of nature, have remained the domain of living, breathing brainiacs — until now. A new computer program called Eureqa comes up with fundamental mathematical laws, the great equations of textbooks and history, from scratch. Feed Eureqa a mess of raw data, and it will find the underlying rules describing the observations. Consider the laws of motion and conservation of energy. Eureqa’s creators, Cornell engineer and computer scientist Hod Lipson and then–graduate s... (p. 20)

When stressed, bacteria can temporarily turn comatose and dodge germ-screening tests. (p. 16)

Science fiction fans know what a 3-D display ought to look like. The film Forbidden Planet showed them more than half a century ago. On a distant world once inhabited by an advanced alien civilization, human scientist Dr. Morbius discovers a table that can create holographic videos. He calls up a ghostly projection of his daughter that’s smaller than but other­wise identical to the girl herself. “Aladdin’s lamp in a physics laboratory,” says an awed spacefarer peering over Morbius’ shoulder. Compared with this Krell technology, the magic of today’s 3-D televisions and movie scr... (p. 18)

Network analysis confirms deviations from the recipe are quite feasible.