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DEET is treated as the dependable baseline of mosquito defence, but the article highlights a more awkward fact: the insects are not just chemical machines. They can learn. If a mosquito encounters the smell of DEET at the same time as a successful meal, the repellent may stop being merely a warning signal and start becoming part of the route to food.

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When Company Becomes A Stressor

The article uses Antarctic wintering crews as a clean, harsh test of a problem that will matter far beyond polar science: what happens when people cannot get away from one another. Its answer is not the familiar workplace lesson that more social contact builds cohesion. In an isolated station, surrounded by darkness, danger, and monotony, contact itself can become part of the strain.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 30th, 2026 Science & technology article listed in the contents as Edible electronics and published under the headline Eat your electronics.

The article argues that ingestible electronics are moving from medical curiosity toward practical diagnostic tools. The basic idea sounds odd: patients swallow a tiny device, let it travel through the digestive system, and collect data from parts of the body that are otherwise awkward, invasive or expensive to inspect. But the technology is becoming more serious because the gut is not just a tube for food. It is a dense chemical environment shaped by microbes, inflammation, diet, disease and drugs. If doctors can read that environment in real time, they may be able to spot illness earlier and treat it more precisely.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 30th, 2026 Leaders article on military technology and the changing logic of war, published under the headline Smarter tech is making war a dumber choice and listed in the contents as The future of war.

The article argues that modern military technology has changed the bargain behind wars of choice. Leaders still imagine short, decisive campaigns in which superior forces impose their will. But recent wars suggest the opposite: sensors, drones, precision weapons and artificial intelligence are making battlefields more transparent, offensives harder and weaker defenders more dangerous. The result is not a clean replacement of old warfare with a new formula. It is a harsher environment in which attacking states can destroy more targets than ever while still failing to achieve their political goals.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business article on airlines and jet-fuel shortages, published under the headline Fuming and listed in the contents as Airlines in crisis.

The article argues that the aviation industry is being forced to confront a supply shock that is both global and oddly specific. The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz has not only trapped crude oil in the Gulf; it has also constrained the movement of jet fuel and the crude used to make it. For airlines, that turns a geopolitical crisis into a direct operating problem. Aircraft may cross continents in hours, but the fuel that keeps them flying still depends on slow, fragile shipping routes and refinery networks.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Leaders article on artificial intelligence and biological risk, published under the headline From cyber-security to biosecurity and listed in the contents as AI arms and alarms.

The article argues that artificial intelligence is moving from being a tool that can help people write, code and reason into something more consequential: a tool that may soon help people manipulate biology. The central warning is stark. If advanced AI systems can guide users through the design or construction of dangerous pathogens, then a technology built to democratize intelligence could also democratize destructive biological capability.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology column Well Informed: Does acupuncture work?, published under the headline Does acupuncture work?.

The article gives acupuncture a measured verdict: it looks useful for some kinds of pain, but the evidence becomes much weaker once the claims move beyond pain relief. That distinction matters because acupuncture occupies an unusual place in modern medicine. It is an ancient Chinese practice traditionally explained through the flow of qi, or vital energy, yet it is now marketed by influencers, athletes and wellness clinics for everything from anti-ageing to fertility, asthma, anxiety and muscle recovery.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology article on a hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, published under the headline Troubled waters and listed in the contents as Handling a hantavirus outbreak.

The article describes a small but unusually worrying outbreak. MV Hondius left Argentina on April 1st with around 150 passengers and crew, bound for Cape Verde. By May 6th, when The Economist went to press, three people on board had been confirmed as infected with hantavirus and another five cases were suspected. Three of those eight people had died.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology article on peptideins, published under the headline Almost proteins and listed in the contents as Proteins' little cousins.

The article describes a newly named class of tiny molecules that could complicate the standard picture of how human cells work. Peptideins resemble proteins but are smaller and, in most cases, have no known function. That uncertainty is the point. They may turn out to be mostly biological noise, or some may become useful clues to disease and promising targets for cancer treatments. Giving them a name is an attempt to make researchers pay closer attention.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business column on Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank Group, published under the headline Warren or Masa and listed in the contents as Berkshire v SoftBank.

The article presents Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank as opposite answers to the same question: what should an investment company do when markets look unusually expensive and technology is changing unusually fast? Berkshire, built by Warren Buffett, has accumulated nearly \$400bn in cash because it cannot find enough attractive deals. SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, is borrowing heavily to finance a sweeping bet on artificial intelligence. One risks becoming too cautious to justify its structure. The other risks running out of money before its vision pays off.