“We’ve created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets—and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.”The most amazing thing I read all week was this piece in the New Yorker by the incomparable Atul Gawande, talking about how people die, how doctors care for terminal patients and society’s attitudes to death. It’s long, but it’s Gawande, so you won’t feel it. Grab some tissues, find a comfy chair.

What lives in the sea? A new census of the world’s marine life gives a thorough answer, complete with 15 new papers in PLoS