From Jenna Orkin Houthis sent explosive drone boat towards Red Sea shipping lanes, Pentagon says 2023 marks Japan's hottest year on record, 1.29 C higher than average As Gazans return to destroyed homes, Israeli ministers push resettlement You might think that starfish bodies are five leg-like appendages coming off a central body with the head somewhere in that core. But a new study shows that, genetically speaking, starfish lack genes for a trunk or appendages and are all head. Just head. How this works: Most animals are bilaterally symmetrical, meaning their bodies can be divided into two identical halves. But starfish have radial symmetry, with five identical segments of their body radiating out from a central point. Researchers determined that head-coding genes are active across the starfish’s entire body, with high concentrations in the center of each appendage. (Check out this delightful video about starfish, made by our colleagues at Nature.) Weathered rocks can pull carbon out of the air more inexpensively than machines. What’s Behind Israel’s Crackdown in the West Bank? The Palestinian political analyst Ibrahim Dalalsha on the politics behind the violence and settlement expansion since October 7th. David Graeber vs Yuval Harari: Exploding the myth of how civilisation began What We Lost When Twitter Became X Bill Ackman says he'll review all MIT professors for plagiarism Academic celebrity Neri Oxman plagiarized from Wikipedia, scholars, a textbook, and other sources without any attribution