🌎 New Atlas stories of the week

Humanoids may be winning marathons and getting factory jobs, but after spending a few days with around 100 different robots of all shapes and sizes, one thing was clear: There's a chasm separating viral demonstration hype and reality.

Nuclear energy in the West took another step forward as the first privately developed, non-light-water reactor to go critical in the United States in more than 40 years reached a major milestone when the Antares Nuclear Mark-0 test reactor came online at Idaho National Laboratory.

The future world's tallest building has passed a major construction milestone. Saudi Arabia's JEC Tower has now reached 102 floors and is rapidly progressing toward its planned height of more than 3,280 ft.

It has no traction control nor anti-lock brake capability. There are no safety nets. It's just raw power at the touch of the throttle, and I love it. And yes – it really has been months since I put gas in my car.

A team of researchers from George Mason University in Virginia, US, has developed a new model to simulate the team dynamics and group behaviours associated with long-term space travel.

In the US, 6,000 women enter menopause every day, or 1.3 million in a year. Now, a study sheds light on the brain connectivity changes that happen in this phase, paving the way to finally understanding and ideally treating midlife cognitive decline.

The current Ebola outbreak is the third-largest in world history, with 906 suspected cases and 223 deaths in the DRC alone as of 27 May.

Circumcision may soon be fully reversible. That’s the goal of Foregen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the first viable bio-engineered foreskin using advanced tissue engineering.

By testing the luminescence of ancient bones, an international team of researchers has provided strong evidence that residents of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave may have been cooking their breakfast some time between 1.07 and 1.78 million years ago.

For nearly 200 years, biologists felt they had seen it all when it came to nudibranch species, with only six types identified around the world. Then, scientists in Taiwan chanced upon another, the size of a grain of rice, that no one knew existed.

As deforestation accelerates across the Amazon, scientists are uncovering a disturbing new consequence: humans are transmitting diseases to wildlife.

By determining the ages of more than 100,000 giant stars, researchers have identified the edge of our galaxy's star-forming disc for the first time, revealing that the most recent star formation is closer to the center than we expected.