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The 19 best Christmas gifts for science lovers (and nerds)

Technology

The 19 best Christmas gifts for science lovers (and nerds)

From microscopes to geodes, 91av staff share their top Christmas present ideas in a gift guide unlike any you’ve seen before

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A caretaker feeds chimpanzees inside their playground area at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Freetown, on April 24, 2025. The sanctuary, which rehabilitates orphaned Western chimpanzees, is a leading site for wildlife research and conservation education programs. Extremely popular with tourists, its keepers have defiantly kept it closed since late May. The protest is meant to spur the government into action over the rapid environmental degradation taking place in the national park where it is located. The deterioration does not just affect the chimps, experts say, but also inhabitants of the wider region including the nearby capital of Freetown, home to some two million people. (Photo by PATRICK MEINHARDT / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK MEINHARDT/AFP via Getty Images)

Life

Smart new book takes an axe to the myth of human exceptionalism

Culture

Mandatory credit Watson and Crick, discoverers of the structure of DNA. James Watson (b.1928, left) and Francis Crick (1916-2004), with their model of part of a DNA molecule in 1953. Watson and Crick met at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1951. Their work on DNA was performed with a knowledge of Chargaff's ratios of the bases in DNA and access to the X-ray crystallography of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College London. Combining this knowledge led to the deduction that DNA exists as a double helix. Crick, Watson and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Franklin having died in 1958. Photographed in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, in May 1953.

Life

Surprising new biography of Francis Crick unravels the story of DNA

Culture

Binary star system, illustration.

Space

Deep-space sci-fi novel is delightful, profound and not to be missed

Culture

Father and daughter

Life

This book is a great insight into the new science of microchimerism

Culture

tiger walking in the river; Shutterstock ID 2451706593; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other:

Environment

New book tells compelling tale of the fight to save the Siberian tiger

Culture

The best new science fiction books of November 2025

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The best new science fiction books of November 2025

Culture

Our verdict on Our Brains, Our Selves: A mix of praise and misgivings

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Our verdict on Our Brains, Our Selves: A mix of praise and misgivings

Culture

Book Club: Read an extract from Every Version of You by Grace Chan

Technology

Book Club: Read an extract from Every Version of You by Grace Chan

Culture

If you could upload your mind to a virtual utopia, would you?

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If you could upload your mind to a virtual utopia, would you?

Grace Chan, author of Every Version of You, the November read for the 91av Book Club, explores the philosophical implications of the choices her characters make

Culture

Comment

91av recommends Never Let Me Go

Culture

Mind

Provocative book sets out to solve the hard problem of consciousness

Culture

Technology

Has life today been enshittified? Cory Doctorow's new book explores

Culture

Environment

An excellent guide to the labyrinthine world of COP summits

Culture