With the Venice, Toronto, and Telluride film festivals having wrapped up (and New York about to start), it’s safe to say the Oscar buzz has begun. Though the annual ceremony is still six months away, quite a few movies are gaining the kind of recognition that could translate into Academy Awards come March. From Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (adapted from a novel about Shakespeare’s son) to this summer’s hot horror flick, Sinners, here are 12 movies you should have on your watch list.
New Bird on the Block: Meet the Blue-Green Jay Hybrid Turning Heads
Brian Stokes/University of Texas at Austin
What happens when a blue jay mates with a green jay? You get the aqua-hued jay you see here. And the bird isn’t just eye-catchingly pretty — it’s also one of the first known hybrid species created due to climate change. First, a bit of bird backstory: The two different parent species (blue and green) split evolutionarily around 7 million years ago and previously had distinct habitats, rarely crossing paths. But their migratory ranges recently started to overlap due to changing climate patterns and urbanization, setting the stage for these long-separated feathered friends to meet and mate. The result is this rare hybrid bird first spotted by a woman in her backyard northeast of San Antonio. Brian Stokes, a University of Texas at Austin doctoral candidate studying ecology, saw the photo she posted to social media. He reached out to see the bird in person, successfully caught (and released) it, and took blood samples, confirming the bird is a roughly 50/50 mix of nuclear DNA from both species. “We were really caught off guard that, in some way, mating could occur,” Stokes, who is the first author of a new study on the now-4-year-old hybrid jay, told ABC News. “That was really surprising to us.” Now the question is, what should it be called?
Together With Timeline
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Culture
Researchers Are a Step Closer to Finding Cleopatra’s Long-Lost Tomb
Kenneth Garrett
Many experts believe that the iconic Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra was buried in Alexandria, Egypt, the capital of the kingdom she ruled — but a new discovery may uproot that theory and help solve the 2,000-year-old mystery of the location of her tomb. In a finding announced Thursday by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Archaeological Works, a team of researchers discovered a sunken port in the Mediterranean Sea that they believe could be the next clue in identifying Cleopatra’s final resting place. Amid a war with the Romans, the queen may have secretly planned for her body to be transported to her tomb through the port to prevent her enemies from finding it. Archaeologist Kathleen Martínez, who led the research team, has been searching for Cleopatra’s tomb since 2005. Three years ago, she and a team of excavators found a collection of objects and structures dating back to Cleopatra’s reign, 51 to 30 B.C., at the ruins of Taposiris Magna: an ancient city and temple about 30 miles west of Alexandria. They also identified a nearly 4,300-foot-long tunnel, approximately 40 feet underground and leading into the Mediterranean Sea, as well as several tall, submerged structures. “This is one of those moments when you feel so alive,” Martínez says of the structures’ discovery in the upcoming National Geographic documentary Cleopatra’s Final Secret. She later tells her team: “After 2,000 years, nobody has ever been there. We are the first ones.” Click here to see more photos from the expedition and watch the trailer for the documentary, airing tomorrow.
Science
These Tiny Gears Can Fit Inside a Strand of Hair, Paving the Way for Medical Breakthroughs
Delmaine Donson/ iStock
For more than three decades, researchers have been attempting to create gears that are small enough to fit inside the human body, but with the current available tech, they’ve hit a wall at 0.1 millimeters in diameter. Now, however, a team at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg has built gears that are so tiny, they can fit inside a strand of hair, laying the groundwork for the smallest on-chip motors in history — and they’re powered by light. The team created gears that each measure about 0.016 millimeters in diameter. A key aspect of their methodology was replacing traditional mechanical drive trains, which transmit power from a source to a machine, with laser light, which is easier to control and doesn’t require direct contact with the device. The gears are as small as some human cells, meaning they could one day be used in medicine, the scientists say. “We can use the new micromotors as pumps inside the human body, for example, to regulate various flows,” first author Gan Wang explained in a press release. “I am also looking at how they function as valves that open and close.” See the gears move.
In Other News
Meet NASA’s newest astronaut class — the first with more women than men (read more)
A novel cancer treatment showed promise in a clinical trial involving 1,400 children with leukemia (read more)
Scientists created a clear coating that turns windows into solar panels without compromising the view (read more)
Whistling as a warning goes back 3,300 years, per an ancient police whistle uncovered in Egypt (read more)
Gladys, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, gave birth to a baby boy, and he looks right at home in her arms (read more)
Something We Love
Disney/John Fleenor
The Golden Bachelor There are a handful of fall TV shows I’m excited to tune in to, The Golden Bachelor ranked highly among them. A spinoff of the long-running Bachelor franchise, the reality series sees people in their golden years embark on a journey to find love. I can’t wait to curl up on the couch for tonight’s Season 2 premiere (new episodes air on ABC every Wednesday). TBD if it will be “the most dramatic season yet,” but based on the trailer, it’s looking like it’ll be a fun watch.
Parents are often heroes for their children — but in this story, the roles are reversed. Battling acute myeloid leukemia, Nick Mondek urgently needed a stem cell donor. So he turned to his 9-year-old son, Stephen, to see if he would consider finding out whether he was a match. Stephen’s response: “When do we go?” Read the moving story.
Photo of the Day
Unique Nicole/Getty Images
Science is cool — and so is receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On Monday, Bill Nye “the Science Guy” was awarded a coveted star, honoring his legacy as a beloved, bow-tie-wearing educator, bestselling author, and pop culture icon. “It’s been the experience of a lifetime spreading the lessons of science to people around the world, and I know we all have the power to change the world because of it,” Nye, 69, wrote on Instagram.
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