- + How the US is preparing for a potential bird flu pandemic—As the US grapples with an ongoing bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle, the country’s health agencies are ramping up surveillance efforts and working to...
- + Bowhead whales still harmed from whaling that ended a century ago—Commercial bowhead whaling ended in the early 20th century, but the industry’s lasting effects on the whales’ genetic diversity are leading to decline...
- + 5 extraordinary ideas about the mind and what it means to be conscious—To celebrate the launch of our new event series in the US, kicking off with a masterclass on the brain and consciousness, we have unlocked five incred...
- + Rare mutation that causes short stature may shed light on ageing—The genetic variant, which causes people to be insensitive to growth hormone, may also protect people from heart disease
- + Alpacas are the only mammals known to directly inseminate the uterus—When alpacas mate, males deposit sperm directly into the uterus, a reproductive strategy not confirmed in any other mammals
- + Asteroid that broke up over Berlin was fastest-spinning one ever seen—Before it shattered over Germany, the asteroid 2024 BX1 was clocked rotating once every 2.6 seconds – the fastest spin we have observed
- + Global warming could make tides higher as well as raising sea levels—In addition to the overall rise in sea level, the heights of tides are also changing as the oceans warm and separate into more distinct layers
- + Deepfake politicians may have a big influence on India’s elections—Political campaigns are deploying AI-generated deepfake versions of politicians to reach hundreds of millions of eligible voters in India’s 2024 elect...
- + Two medicines for opioid addiction also help with compulsive gambling—The medicines nalmefene and naltrexone helped compulsive gamblers reduce their betting activities, trials have shown
- + Swarm of nanorobots can remove tiny plastic fragments from water—In just 2 hours, small metal robots can capture most nanoscopic plastic particles from a sample of water
- + Wasps use face-recognition brain cells to identify each other—The neurons in wasp brains that help them recognise hive mates are similar to those in the brains of primates, including humans
- + Supermassive black holes may provide a nursery for mini ones to grow—The supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies may capture smaller black holes. Not only does this prove a place for the small black holes to...
- + Birthplace of red asteroid Kamo‘oalewa pinned to specific moon crater—The redness of asteroid 469219 Kamo‘oalewa marks it out as probably originating on the moon, and now we might know the exact impact crater it was laun...
- + Rat neuron injection lets mice that can’t smell sniff out cookies—Mice that had been genetically modified to lack the ability to smell could sniff out hidden cookies when sensory neurons from rats were grown in their...
- + Modern rose hybrids have a worrying lack of genetic diversity—Intensive breeding since the 19th century has created thousands of varieties of rose, but a reduction in genetic diversity could leave them vulnerable...
- + Brain activity seems to be more complex in baby girls than boys—When fetuses and babies were exposed to sound stimuli, their brains' subsequent activity appeared to be more complicated in the females than the males
- + India’s healthcare system falls short despite Modi’s improvements—More than 1.4 billion people live in India, giving its healthcare system a major role in planetary well-being. In the past 10 years, prime minister Na...
- + Can India build a world-leading computer chip industry from scratch?—India currently has a fairly small chip-manufacturing industry, but prime minister Narendra Modi wants the country to become a dominant player in the ...
- + Japan’s SLIM moon lander has shockingly survived a third lunar night—Almost all moon landers break down during the extraordinary cold of lunar night, but Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has astonishingly sur...
- + Quantum forces used to automatically assemble tiny device—The very weak forces of attraction caused by the Casimir effect can now be used to manipulate microscopic gold flakes and turn them into a light-trapp...
- + Culling predatory starfish conserves coral on the Great Barrier Reef—Targeted culling of crown-of-thorns starfish has resulted in parts of the Great Barrier Reef maintaining and even increasing coral cover, leading rese...
- + Why curbing chatbots' worst exploits is a game of whack-a-mole—AI companies are trying to impose safety measures on their chatbots, while researchers are finding ways around them all the time. Where will this end,...
- + Why we need to modernise our emotional relationship with cancer—Cancer has been one of the world's most feared diseases for decades. But this "cancerphobia" no longer matches the evidence and is doing great harm, a...
- + Let's not trash recycling technologies that could end plastic waste—Some environmental campaigners claim that attempts to create a circular economy for plastics are doomed to fail – but the arguments can be disingenuou...
- + Huge genetic study redraws the tree of life for flowering plants—Using genomic data from more than 9500 species, biologists have mapped the evolutionary relationships between flowering plants
- + Nuclear fusion experiment overcomes two key operating hurdles—Two important barriers to a stable, powerful fusion reaction have been leapt by an experiment in a small tokamak reactor, but we don’t yet know if the...
- + Your diet may influence how effective vaccines are for you—Obese mice that lost weight on a low-fat diet before getting a flu shot had better immune responses than those that lost weight afterwards, suggesting...
- + Huge dinosaur footprints belonged to one of the largest raptors ever—A set of large, distinctive footprints suggest a raptor dinosaur that lived in East Asia 96 million years ago grew to a length of 5 metres
- + Exquisite fossils of Cretaceous shark solve mystery of how it hunted—Six full-body fossils of Ptychodus sharks have been formally analysed for the first time, revealing that they were fast swimmers that preyed on shelle...
- + Climate change could make it harder to detect submarines—Climate change’s effects on ocean water temperatures and salinity could shrink sonar detection ranges underwater and make it more challenging to spot ...
- + Will Amazon's robotic revolution spark a new wave of job losses?—Amazon says it will create new jobs to replace roles taken over by machines, but it isn’t clear whether this will happen quickly enough
- + Ships smuggling Russian oil spotted in satellite images by AI—AI can analyse satellite images to reveal the movements of dark ships in a shadow fleet that smuggles oil and other cargo from sanctioned countries su...
- + Should we tweak the atmosphere to counteract global warming?—With severe climate impacts becoming more and more apparent, many scientists think we should explore ways to block out solar radiation, but doing so w...
- + Glucose monitors may misclassify people as being at risk of diabetes—Our blood sugar levels vary a lot from day to day, so results from continuous glucose monitors need to be interpreted with caution
- + Some scientists say insects are conscious – it doesn't settle anything—A group of around 40 scientists signed a declaration calling for formal acknowledgement of consciousness in a range of animals, including insects and ...
- + Has the US finally figured out how to do high-speed rail?—As work begins on building the US’s first high-speed rail service – linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas – analysts say the project could serve as a bluep...
- + Single atoms captured morphing into quantum waves in startling image—In the 1920s, Erwin Schrödinger wrote an equation that predicts how particles-turned-waves should behave. Now, researchers are perfectly recreating th...
- + Deliberate fires are responsible for half of the land burned each year—The finding that managed fires burn a much greater area than thought means we may be underestimating the increase in wildfires due to global heating
- + Drug residue can be detected in fingerprints left at crime scenes—Forensic investigators can reliably measure drug and explosive residue using gels that lift fingerprint samples
- + Geoengineering could save the ice sheets – but only if we start soon—Shading the planet by spraying aerosols into the stratosphere might stave off ice sheet collapse, modelling studies suggest, but we are running out of...
- + Nocturnal ants use polarised moonlight to find their way home—An Australian bull ant is the first animal known to use the patterns produced by polarised moonlight to navigate its environment
- + How cannabis gets you high and alters your perception—20 April is weed's unofficial holiday. In honour of the special day, we collected our answers to all your cannabis questions. This is the science of 4...
- + Knot theory could help spacecraft navigate crowded solar systems—It can be difficult to figure out how to move a spacecraft from one orbit to another, but a trick from knot theory can help find spots where shifting ...
- + Animals may help ecosystems store 3 times more carbon than we thought—Carbon storage calculations don’t always take into account the effects of animals – when they eat, defecate and die, they help store lots of carbon
- + Songs that birds 'sing' in their dreams translated into sound—By measuring how birds’ vocal muscles move while they are asleep and using a physical model for how those muscles produce sound, researchers have pull...
- + Your genes may influence how much you enjoy listening to music—Identical twins seem to experience more similar levels of pleasure when listening to music than non-identical twins, which suggests it has a genetic e...
- + Wind turbines based on condor wings could capture more energy—Curved wing tips inspired by the world's heaviest flying bird could enhance the efficiency of wind turbines by of 10 per cent, according to simulation...
- + Early humans spread as far north as Siberia 400,000 years ago—A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlie...
- + Autonomous e-scooters could ride themselves back to charging points—Teams of staff usually return e-scooters to where they will be needed, but adapted scooters that can balance and stop themselves, and be controlled re...
- + Extreme heat in 2023 linked to drastic slump in growth of marine life—Last year’s marine heatwaves saw an unprecedented decline in the growth of phytoplankton and algae, which many animals in the oceans depend on for foo...
- + Dietary changes relieve irritable bowel syndrome better than medicine—Both a special diet that excludes “FODMAP” compounds and a low-carb high-fibre diet were effective
- + Cocaine seems to hijack brain pathways that prioritise food and water—Cocaine and morphine hijacked neural responses in the brains of mice, which resulted in them consuming less food and water
- + Fossil snake discovered in India may have been the largest ever—The vertebrae of Vasuki indicus, a snake that lived 47 million years ago, suggest it could have been as long as 15 metres
- + Jupiter's moon Io has been a volcanic inferno for billions of years—Measurements of sulphur isotopes in Io’s atmosphere show that the moon may have been volcanically active for its entire lifetime
- + Quantum-proof encryption may not actually stop quantum hackers—Cryptographers are scrambling to understand an algorithm that could undermine the mathematics behind next-generation encryption methods, which are int...
- + Particles move in beautiful patterns when they have ‘spatial memory’—A mathematical model of a particle that remembers its past so that it never travels the same path twice produces stunningly complex patterns
- + Ancient Maya burned their dead rulers to mark a new dynasty—In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of...
- + What is cloud seeding and did it cause the floods in Dubai?—Cloud seeding almost certainly did not play a significant role in the flooding on the Arabian peninsula this week – but the heavy rains may have been ...
- + Ancient marine reptile found on UK beach may be the largest ever—The jawbone of an ichthyosaur uncovered in south-west England has been identified as a new species, and researchers estimate that the whole animal was...
- + Ancient humans lived inside a lava tube in the Arabian desert—Underground tunnels created by lava flows provided humans with shelter for thousands of years beneath the hot desert landscape of Saudi Arabia
- + Why we need to change the way we think about exhaustion—One in five adults worldwide is living with fatigue. The general advice is to “do more” - but this isn’t the only solution to our exhaustion epidemic,...
- + Old-fashioned pessimism might actually help us fight climate change—Negative thinking is unpopular but it could drive more realistic efforts to limit harm from global warming
- + Skin-deep wounds can damage gut health in mice—We know there is some connection between skin and gut health, but many assumed the gut was the one calling the shots. A new study suggests that the in...
- + Intel reveals world's biggest 'brain-inspired' neuromorphic computer—A computer intended to mimic the way the brain processes and stores data could potentially improve the efficiency and capabilities of artificial intel...
- + Turning plants blue with gene editing could make robot weeding easier—Weeding robots can sometimes struggle to tell weeds from crops, but genetically modifying the plants we want to keep to make them brightly coloured wo...
- + A cicada double brood is coming – it's less rare than you think—Up to 17 US states could be peppered with more than a trillion cicadas this spring, and though it has been a while since these two specific broods eme...
- + Dusting farms with waste concrete could boost yields and lock up CO2—Ground-up concrete can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a similar way to ground-up rocks, according to a field study in Ireland
- + Colonies of single-celled creatures could explain how embryos evolved—We know little about how embryonic development in animals evolved from single-celled ancestors, but simple organisms with a multicellular life stage o...
- + Sleeping bumblebees can survive underwater for a week—A serendipitous lab accident revealed that hibernating bumblebee queens can make it through days of flooding, revealing that they are less vulnerable ...
- + Starfish have hundreds of feet but no brain – here's how they move—Starfish feet are coordinated purely through mechanical loading, enabling the animals to bounce rhythmically along the seabed without a central nervou...
- + Our plans to tackle climate change with carbon storage don't add up—Modelling that shows how the world can remain below 1.5°C of warming assumes we can store vast amounts of carbon dioxide underground, but a new analys...
- + How to destroy a black hole—A black hole would be tough to destroy, but in the season two premiere of Dead Planets Society our hosts are willing to go to extremes, from faster-th...
- + Watch a swarm of cyborg cockroaches controlled by computers—Remote-controlled cockroaches with computers mounted on their backs can move as a swarm towards a target location, and could be used for search missio...
- + A surprisingly enormous black hole has been found in our galaxy—A black hole 33 times the mass of the sun is the largest stellar black hole ever spotted, and its strange companion star could help explain how it got...
- + Tiny nematode worms can grow enormous mouths and become cannibals—One species of nematode worm turns into a kin-devouring nightmare if it grows up in a crowded environment with a poor diet
- + Geoscientists are using telecom 'dark fibres' to map Earth’s innards—The networks of fibre optic cables that criss-cross the planet could be used to better understand what’s happening inside it
- + Parkinson's disease progression slowed by antibody infusions—Monthly infusions with the drug prasinezumab appeared to slow the progression of motor symptoms in people with advanced Parkinson's disease
- + Deadly upwellings of cold water pose threat to migratory sharks—Climate change is making extreme cold upwellings more common in certain regions of the world, and these events can be catastrophic for animals such as...
- + Are panda sex lives being sabotaged by the wrong gut microbes?—Conservationists think tweaking pandas’ diets might shift their gut microbiomes in a way that could encourage them to mate
- + See inside an endangered California condor egg just before it hatches—The hatching of the 250th California condor chick at the San Diego Zoo marks a notable milestone for a species that narrowly evaded extinction
- + ‘Peaceful’ male bonobos may actually be more aggressive than chimps—Bonobos have long been regarded as the peaceful ape, in sharp contrast with violent chimpanzees, but a study based on thousands of hours of observatio...
- + Arctic permafrost is now a net source of major greenhouse gases—An Arctic-wide survey has found that the permafrost region is emitting more carbon into the atmosphere than it absorbs, causing the planet to heat eve...
- + Chatbots can persuade conspiracy theorists their view might be wrong—After a short conversation with an artificial intelligence, people’s belief in a conspiracy theory dropped by about 20 per cent
- + Untangling the enigmatic origins of the human family’s newest species—Five years ago, a fossil found in the Philippines was determined to be from a new species of hominin called Homo luzonensis. Since then, we’ve learned...
- + Water purifier is powered by static electricity from your body—A 10-minute walk can build up enough static electricity to power a battery-free water purifier, which could be especially helpful during disasters or ...
- + Embryos pause development when nutrients are low — and now we know how—Embryos seem to have a sensor that picks up when nutrients are scarce, prompting them to pause their development until resources become more abundant ...
- + A bacterium has evolved into a new cellular structure inside algae—A once-independent bacterium has evolved into an organelle that provides nitrogen to algal cells – an event so rare that there are only three other kn...
- + AI can spot parasites in stool samples to help diagnose infections—About 1.5 billion people worldwide carry a risk of conditions including malnutrition because of parasitic infection, and AI could help identify those ...
- + Quantum 'supersolid' matter stirred using magnets—We can’t stir ordinary solids, but one research team now claims to have stirred an extraordinary quantum “supersolid”, generating tiny vortices
- + How Peter Higgs revealed the forces that hold the universe together—The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. De...
- + Testing drugs on mini-cancers in the lab may reveal best treatment—A small early-stage trial of the approach, which involves testing dozens of drug combinations on thousands of dishes of cells, may help people with ca...
- + Air pollution can make insects mate with the wrong species—Ground-level ozone, a product of pollution from cars, degrades insect pheromones, and this can result in mismatched mating and sterile offspring
- + Planets that look alike might be a sign of spacefaring aliens—We don’t know what alien life might look like, but if other civilisations can colonise multiple worlds, we might see planets that look unusually simil...
- + Watch mini humanoid robots showing off their football skills—These soccer-playing robots can respond faster than ones trained in a standard way because they improved their skills via an artificial intelligence-b...
- + Some of our favourite songs make us sad, which may be why we like them—Our favourite sad songs seem to become less enjoyable when we try to take the emotion out of them
- + Post-surgery infections may mainly be caused by skin bacteria—The skin microbiome may be a bigger cause of post-operative wound infections than bacteria contaminating hospital equipment
- + Why AIs that tackle complex maths could be the next big breakthrough—Research-level mathematics might seem an unlikely proving ground for artificial intelligence, but recent developments suggest it offers a route to aut...
- + We can't get to net zero without tackling inequality—Inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability. The super-rich are an environmental horror story that we can't ignore, says Graham Lawton
- + Why nutrition needs to be on the educational agenda—Nutrition must be as essential as maths or science at our educational institutions to solve the US obesity crisis, says Aman Majmudar
- + Bizarre crystal made only of electrons revealed in astonishing detail—To capture the clearest and most direct images of a “Wigner crystal”, a structure made entirely of electrons, researchers used a special kind of micro...
- + Fractal pattern identified at molecular scale in nature for first time—An enzyme in a cyanobacterium can take the unusual form a triangle containing ever-smaller triangular gaps, making a fractal pattern
- + Treating gum disease may ward off an irregular heartbeat—Inflamed gum tissue may allow bacteria in the mouth to enter the bloodstream, which could affect the heart
- + Mathematician wins Turing award for harnessing randomness—Avi Wigderson has won the 2023 Turing award for his work on understanding how randomness can shape and improve computer algorithms
- + Phone batteries could last 50% longer if more 5G towers are built—Adding more masts could reduce the overall energy use of phone networks by two-thirds and boost handset battery life by 50 per cent
- + Peter Higgs, physicist who theorised the Higgs boson, has died aged 94—Nobel prizewinning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs has died aged 94. He proposed the particle that gives other particles mass – now named the Higgs ...
- + Oral vaccine prevents recurring UTIs for nine years—An oral vaccine in the form of a pineapple-flavoured spray prevented recurrent urinary tract infections in 53.9 per cent of clinical trial participant...
- + Australia’s Indigenous people were making pottery over 2000 years ago—An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans
- + One of the biggest mysteries of cosmology may finally be solved—The expansion rate of the universe, measured by the Hubble constant, has been one of the most controversial numbers in cosmology for years, and we see...
- + Northern white rhino could be saved from extinction using frozen skin—We have enough genetic material to bring back the northern white rhino, but doing so won’t be easy
- + Prosthetic hands are easier to control using unrelated muscles—Random-seeming hand gestures seem to help people control prosthetic hands better than ones that mimic their ordinary muscle movements
- + The multiverse could be much, much bigger than we ever imagined—A new way of interpreting the elusive mathematics of quantum mechanics could fundamentally change our understanding of reality
- + Physicists created an imaginary magnetic field in real life—Researchers have used quantum light to create a magnetic field with a strength that is measured in imaginary numbers
- + Dumping green sand in shallow seas could let them absorb more CO2—Releasing 1 gigatonne of ground-up olivine on coastal shelves each year could help lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, find researchers, but ques...
- + March 2024 is the 10th consecutive month to break temperature records—Every month since April 2023 has been the hottest on record, as climate continues its record-breaking streak
- + Eclipse 2024: 5 of the best pictures of the total solar eclipse—On 8 April, a total solar eclipse passed over Mexico, the US and Canada – here are some of the most stunning images
- + AI pop-ups can help you stop doomscrolling on your phone—An AI program can learn from smartphone users' behaviours in order to send timely pop-up reminders about when to close attention-grabbing apps. The sy...
- + Long covid linked to signs of ongoing inflammatory responses in blood—People with long covid after a serious covid-19 infection have raised levels of many immune molecules in their blood. Better understanding how these m...
- + Stone Age blades could have been used for butchery, not just hunting—A modern butchery experiment using replicas of Stone Age tools raises new questions about how often prehistoric peoples hunted large animals such as b...
- + When is the next total solar eclipse visible from the UK?—The next time a total solar eclipse will be visible from the UK is decades away, but there are other places nearby that will experience one sooner
- + Cannabis use in pregnancy may raise children’s risk of ADHD and autism—A study of more than 220,000 people found that cannabis use during pregnancy was associated with their children having roughly twice the risk of ADHD,...
- + 5 solar eclipse activities to do with children—From building an eclipse viewer to using the sun to pop balloons, here's a child-friendly activity guide for April's eclipse
- + We finally know why Stephen Hawking's black hole equation works—Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein calculated the entropy of a black hole in the 1970s, but it took physicists until now to figure out the quantum e...
- + Suppressing wildfires is harming California’s giant sequoia trees—California’s rare sequoias rely on high heat to disperse their seeds, and efforts to reduce the size of wildfires may be damaging their ability to rep...
- + How a total solar eclipse in 1919 left physicists 'more or less agog'—One total solar eclipse changed physics forever – and even to this day these celestial phenomena are astonishing viewers and teaching us crucial lesso...
- + Left-handed monkeys prompt rethink about evolution of right-handedness—A popular idea links primates living on the ground with a tendency for right-handedness, but findings from urban langurs in India cast doubt on the id...
- + The mathematician who worked out how to time travel—Mathematics suggested that time travel is physically possible – and Kurt Gödel proved it. Mathematician Karl Sigmund explains how the polymath did it
- + How mass bleaching has pushed the Great Barrier Reef to the brink—Diving at One Tree Island in one of the most highly protected parts of the Great Barrier Reef reveals the shocking extent of the latest mass bleaching...
- + Eclipse 2024: When is it and where can I see it?—North America will have a total solar eclipse on 8 April – here is where, when and how to view it safely
- + Could an MRI scan make prostate cancer screening more accurate?—Combining PSA blood tests with MRI scans is making the screening less harmful, but it still should be targeted only at high-risk groups, such as men w...
- + Should we be worried about a bird flu pandemic in the US?—One person in the US has contracted bird flu after being exposed to dairy cows that have the virus, but experts say there is no immediate threat of a ...
- + There are hints that dark energy may be getting weaker—The standard model of cosmology says that the strength of dark energy should be constant, but tentative hints are emerging that it may have weakened r...
- + What is Disease X and do we need to worry about it?—The term “Disease X” means a new infection, or an existing pathogen that has mutated to become more dangerous, with the potential to cause a global pa...
- + Why some songs make our heart swell and others give us butterflies—Where in our body we feel the physical sensation of hearing music seems to depend on how surprising the piece's chords are
- + Bisexual women expect to have an orgasm with women more than with men—When asked to imagine a hypothetical sexual encounter, bisexual women anticipated that they would be more likely to orgasm with another woman than wit...
- + Electric vehicles have lowered San Francisco's carbon footprint—A network of sensors stretching from San Francisco to Sonoma county’s vineyards shows that electric vehicles have helped lower carbon emissions by alm...
- + Marine protected areas aren't helping fish populations recover—Protected zones are meant to let adult fish populations recover from overfishing, but an analysis of 111 sites in the Caribbean finds that this is not...
- + Banning smartphones is tempting but it won't solve anxiety in children—Anxiety is on the rise in young people but we need to follow the science - and the causes aren't clearly linked to social media
- + I might be an astrophysicist, but I'm still learning about stargazing—I have two degrees in astronomy, so you'd think I would know what I'm doing when it comes to looking at the sky. I don't, but I'm trying to change tha...
- + Why it is time for a longevity revolution—With global life expectancy now exceeding 70 years old, we need to change how we age, not how long we age, says Andrew Scott
- + Microsoft and Quantinuum’s quantum computer may be most reliable yet—A quantum computer built by Quantinuum uses “logical quantum bits” designed by Microsoft to run simple computational routines with an unprecedented le...
- + The ambitious plans to study the sun during April's solar eclipse—Solar scientists have been preparing for years for a 4-minute window, during the total solar eclipse on 8 April, in which they will study the sun's co...
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