Books & Arts in 2014

Daniel Cressey celebrates the pending refit of the Glass Lab — an innovative crossroads of science and art at MIT.

John Gilbey discovers how Peru has leapfrogged standard models of technological roll-out to ignite social change.

Tim Flannery celebrates Germaine Greer's foray into natural science — a chronicle of her rainforest-restoration project in a corner of Queensland.

Eric Hand views a planetarium show on dark matter and dark energy that is both dislocating and transfixing.

Margaret Catley-Carlson is invigorated by a brace of books on the future of world water supplies.

Sound artist Daniel Fishkin tries to convey the experience of tinnitus. As the latest incarnation of his installation series Composing the Tinnitus Suites opens in Brooklyn, New York, he talks about building a mechanical model of the inner ear.

Sharon Weinberger assesses two studies probing the roles of physics and psychology in conflicts past, present and future.

David Adam applauds the autobiography of a high-flyer confronting his own nervous suffering head-on.

Ben Sheldon relishes a study of the broad-ranging impact of ornithology on modern biology.

It promises to be a heady year for science in culture: fans can steep in the sumptuous world of colour, unpeel the upside of failure, explore neural pathways, revisit the First World War, mend a rip in space-time, go pterosaur-spotting and traverse a mammoth-ridden nation. Daniel Cressey investigates.

Andrew Liddle contemplates an accomplished explication of the multiverse.