- + Cancer vaccines are showing promise at last—Trials are under way against skin, brain and lung tumours
- + New firefighting tech is being trialled in Sardinia’s ancient forests—It could sniff out blazes long before they spread out of control
- + Can Jeff Bezos match Elon Musk in space?—After 25 years, Blue Origin finally heads to orbit, and hopes to become a contender in the private space race
- + The other billionaire space company—Might Blue Origin at last become a contender in the private space race?
- + Why some doctors are reassessing hypnosis—There is growing evidence that it can help with pain, depression and more
- + Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all—We analyse two centuries of scholarly work
- + Giving children the wrong (or not enough) toys may doom a society—Survival is a case of child’s play
- + Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why—Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a role
- + Humans and Neanderthals met often, but only one event matters—The mystery of exactly how people left Africa deepens
- + Machine translation is almost a solved problem—But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
- + Machine translation is almost a solved problem. Making it perfect will be a hard problem—Interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
- + AI can bring back a person’s own voice—And it can generate sentences trained on their own writing
- + Carbon emissions from tourism are rising disproportionately fast—The industry is failing to make itself greener
- + Why China is building a Starlink system of its own—When it is finished, Qianfan could number 14,000 satellites
- + Lots of hunting. Not much gathering. The diet of early Americans—What they ate is given away by the isotopes in their bodies
- + Stimulating parts of the brain can help the paralysed to walk again—Implanted electrodes allowed one man to climb stairs unaided
- + Can anyone realistically challenge SpaceX’s launch supremacy?—And if its boss now tries to kill NASA’s own heavy lifter, will that matter?
- + Dreams of asteroid mining, orbital manufacturing and much more—Ideas for making money in orbit that seemed mad in the 1960s now look sane
- + Elon Musk is causing problems for the Royal Society—His continued membership has led to a high-profile resignation
- + Deforestation is costing Brazilian farmers millions—Without trees to circulate moisture, the land is getting hotter and drier
- + Robots can learn new actions faster thanks to AI techniques—They could soon show their moves in settings from car factories to care homes
- + Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad for you—A mystery is finally being solved
- + Nobody knows why ultra-processed foods are bad for you—But scientists are racing to find out
- + Why are ultra-processed foods bad for you?—Scientists are racing to find out
- + Scientific publishers are producing more papers than ever—Concerns about some of their business models are building
- + The two types of human laugh—One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else
- + Scientists are building a catalogue of every type of cell in our bodies—It has thus far shed light on everything from organ formation to the causes of inflammation
- + How squid could help people get over their needle phobia—Cephalopod ink propulsion is inspiring an alternative to syringes
- + Norway’s Atlantic salmon risks going the way of the panda—Climate change and fish farming are endangering its future
- + Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models—More accurate predictions will lead to better policy-making
- + Physics reveals the best design for a badminton arena—The key is minimising the disruptive effects of ventilation
- + There’s lots of gold in urban waste dumps—The pay dirt could be 15 times richer than natural deposits
- + A battle is raging over the definition of open-source AI—Companies that bet on the right one could win big
- + As wellness trends take off, iodine deficiency makes a quiet comeback—Levels of the vital nutrient are falling rapidly in America
- + How blood-sucking vampire bats get their energy—They pull off a trick previously thought unique to a few insects
- + China plans to crash a spacecraft into a distant asteroid—It will be only the second country to conduct such a planetary defence experiment
- + Researchers are questioning if ADHD should be seen as a disorder—It should, instead, be seen as a different way of being normal
- + Airships may finally prove useful for transporting cargo—The problem of variable buoyancy is being overcome
- + Space may be worse for humans than thought—Why going into orbit sends cells haywire
- + Heart-cockle shells may work like fibre-optic cables—Inbuilt lenses transmit sunlight to symbiotic algae
- + Winemakers are building grape-picking robots—Automating this delicate task is harder than it seems
- + Why Oriental hornets can’t get drunk—They can guzzle extreme amounts for their size, without suffering ill effects
- + The study of ancient DNA is helping to solve modern crimes—Such techniques have helped secure two convictions this year
- + Perovskite crystals may represent the future of solar power—Their efficiency rates far exceed those of conventional silicon panels
- + SpaceX is NASA’s biggest lunar rival—The company’s successes are also showing up the agency’s failings
- + Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents—The conditions are hot, sulphurous and low in oxygen
- + Elon Musk’s SpaceX has achieved something extraordinary—If SpaceX can land and reuse the most powerful rocket ever made what can’t it do?
- + Could life exist on one of Jupiter’s moons?—A spacecraft heading to Europa is designed to find out
- + AI wins big at the Nobels—Awards went to the discoverers of micro-RNA, pioneers of artificial-intelligence models and those using them for protein-structure prediction
- + Meet Japan’s hitchhiking fish—Medaka catch rides on obliging birds, confirming one of Darwin’s hunches
- + Noise-dampening tech could make ships less disruptive to marine life—Solutions include bendy propellers and “acoustic black holes”
- + Google’s DeepMind researchers among recipients of Nobel prize for chemistry—The award honours protein design and the use of AI for protein-structure prediction
- + AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics—The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
- + A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA—These tiny molecules regulate genes and control how cells develop and behave
- + AI offers an intriguing new way to diagnose mental-health conditions—Models look for sound patterns undetectable by the human ear
- + Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work—Better tools are needed to analyse their effects
- + Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases—The isolation can be geographic or cultural
- + An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow—For now, it is the most sophisticated connectome ever made
- + Immune therapy shows promise for asthma, heart disease—and even ageing—Making treatment quick and affordable will be the challenge
- + New technologies can spot pesky leaks in water pipelines—Across Europe, nearly a quarter of water goes to waste
- + NASA is selling a brand-new Moon rover—Never used, one previous owner
- + The world’s oldest cheese sheds light on ancient Chinese culture—What genetic analysis of a 3,500-year-old sour goat’s cheese from Xinjiang reveals
- + Most electric-car batteries could soon be made by recycling old ones—Mining for raw materials may peak by the mid-2030s
- + New battery designs could lead to gains in power and capacity—Researchers are looking beyond the cathode
- + China’s AI firms are cleverly innovating around chip bans—Tweaks to software blunt the shortage of powerful hardware
- + Earth may once have had a planetary ring—It would have collapsed 450m years ago
- + How bush pigs saved Madagascar’s baobabs—Non-native species are not always harmful
- + Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power—Tricks from the oil industry have produced a hot-rocks breakthrough
- + The world’s first nuclear clock is on the horizon—It would be 1,000 times more accurate than today’s atomic timekeepers
- + Baby formulas now share some ingredients with breast milk—They may one day replicate its benefits
- + Breast milk’s benefits are not limited to babies—Some of its myriad components are being tested as treatments for cancer and other diseases
- + Particles that damage satellites can be flushed out of orbit—All it takes is very long radio waves
- + A common food dye can make skin transparent—The discovery allows scientists to see inside live animals
- + Fewer babies are born in the months following hot days—The effect is small but consistent
- + New tech can make air-conditioning less harmful to the planet—The key is energy efficiency
- + The noisome economics of dung beetles—They are worth millions a year to cattle ranchers
- + Digital twins are making companies more efficient—They will also help them reap the benefits of advances in AI
- + Digital twins are enabling scientific innovation—They are being used to simulate everything from bodily organs to planet Earth
- + Digital twins are speeding up manufacturing—Makers of Formula 1 cars and jet engines are leading the way
- + Billionaire space travel heads for a new frontier—Flying on Elon Musk’s spaceship; sponsored by Doritos
- + Wildfires are getting more frequent and more devastating—Climate change is accelerating the blaze
- + The world needs codes quantum computers can’t break—America’s standards agency thinks it has identified three
- + Why a new art gallery in Bangalore is important for Indian science—It aims to make research and tinkering more accessible to the public
- + Climate change could reawaken harmful invasive plants—The sooner they can be weeded out, the better
- + AI scientists are producing new theories of how the brain learns—The challenge for neuroscientists is how to test them
- + Exposure to the sun’s UV radiation may be good for you—For now, though, keep the sun cream handy
- + Engineered dust could help make Mars habitable—Restoring water on Mars may be easier than you think
- + New batteries are stretchable enough to wear against the skin—They take their inspiration from electric eels
- + Do women make better doctors than men?—Research suggests yes
- + Lavender extract makes excellent mosquito-repellent—Scientists have turned it into clothing
- + How to reduce the risk of developing dementia—A healthy lifestyle can prevent or delay almost half of cases
- + GPT, Claude, Llama? How to tell which AI model is best—Beware model-makers marking their own homework
- + How America built an AI tool to predict Taliban attacks—“Raven Sentry” was a successful experiment in open-source intelligence
- + Gene-editing drugs are moving from lab to clinic at lightning speed—The promising treatments still face technical and economic hurdles, though
- + How Ukraine’s new tech foils Russian aerial attacks—It is pioneering acoustic detection, with surprising success
- + The deep sea is home to “dark oxygen”—Nodules on the seabed, rather than photosynthesis, are the source of the gas
- + Augmented reality offers a safer driving experience—Complete with holograms on the windscreen
- + Clues to a possible cure for AIDS—Doctors, scientists and activists meet to discuss how to pummel HIV
- + AI can predict tipping points before they happen—Potential applications span from economics to epidemiology
- + Astronomers have found a cave on the moon—Such structures could serve as habitats for future astronauts
- + H5N1 avian flu could cause a human pandemic—Existing immunity and vaccines may soften its severity
- + Freeze-dried chromosomes can survive for thousands of years—They contain unprecedented detail about their long-dead parent organisms
- + Researchers are figuring out how large language models work—Such insights could help make them safer, more truthful and easier to use
- + A scientific discovery could lead to leak-free period products—Polymers from algae can turn menstrual blood into a gel
- + Vaccines could keep salmon safe from sea lice—A successful jab would be a boon to fish farmers
- + New yeast strains can produce untapped flavours of lager—One Chilean hybrid has a spicy taste, with hints of clove
- + A new technique could analyse tumours mid-surgery—It would be fast enough to guide the hands of neurosurgeons
- + The world’s most studied rainforest is still yielding new insights—Even after a century of research, Barro Colorado in Panama continues to shed light on natural life
- + A new bionic leg can be controlled by the brain alone—Those using the prosthetic can walk as fast as those with intact lower limbs
- + How the last mammoths went extinct—Small genetic mutations accumulated through inbreeding may have made them vulnerable to disease
- + The race to prevent satellite Armageddon—Fears of a Russian nuclear weapon in orbit are inspiring new protective tech
- + At least 10% of research may already be co-authored by AI—That might not be a bad thing
- + A deadly new strain of mpox is raising alarm—Health officials warn it could rapidly spread beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo
- + What The Economist thought about solar power—A look back through our archives: sometimes prescient, sometimes not
- + A flower’s female sex organs can speed up fertilisation—They can also stop it from happening
- + How physics can improve image-generating AI—The laws governing electromagnetism and even the weak nuclear force could be worth mimicking
- + The dominant model of the universe is creaking—Dark energy could break it apart
- + Only 5% of therapies tested on animals are approved for human use—More rigorous experiments could improve those odds
- + The secret to taking better penalties—Practise with an augmented-reality headset
- + China has become a scientific superpower—From plant biology to superconductor physics the country is at the cutting edge
- + Like people, elephants call each other by name—And anthropoexceptionalism takes another tumble
- + Elon Musk’s Starship makes a test flight without exploding—Crucially, the upper stage of the giant rocket survived atmospheric re-entry
- + Zany ideas to slow polar melting are gathering momentum—Giant curtains to keep warm water away from glaciers strike some as too risky
- + The quest to build robots that look and behave like humans—The engineering challenges involved are fiendish, but worth tackling
- + Robots are suddenly getting cleverer. What’s changed?—There is more to AI than ChatGPT
- + Many Ukrainian drones have been disabled by Russian jamming—Their latest models navigate by sight alone
- + Progress on the science of menstruation—at last—Newly developed research models show promise
- + Hordes of cicadas are emerging simultaneously in America—The ancestors of these two neighbouring broods last met in 1803
- + A second human case of bird flu in America is raising alarm—How close is the H5N1 outbreak to becoming the next pandemic?
- + The AirFish is a fast ferry that will fly above the waves—It takes inspiration from the “Caspian Sea Monster”
- + A new age of sail begins—By harnessing wind power, high-tech sails can help cut marine pollution
- + A promising non-invasive technique can help paralysed limbs move—All that’s needed is electricity and exercise
- + It is dangerously easy to hack the world’s phones—A system at the heart of global telecommunications is woefully insecure
- + The Great Barrier Reef is seeing unprecedented coral bleaching—Continued global warming will mean its obliteration
- + Some corals are better at handling the heat—Scientists are helping them breed
- + Today’s AI models are impressive. Teams of them will be formidable—Working together will make LLMs more capable and intelligent—for good and ill
- + A Russia-linked network uses AI to rewrite real news stories—CopyCop churned out 19,000 deceptive posts in a month
- + To stay fit, future Moon-dwellers will need special workouts—Running around the inside of a barrel might help
- + Wind turbines keep getting bigger—That poses a giant transport problem
- + New crop-spraying technologies are more efficient than ever—Pesticide use could be cut by up to 90%
- + Archaeologists identify the birthplace of the mysterious Yamnaya—The ancient culture, which transformed Europe, was also less murderous than once thought
- + Producing fake information is getting easier—But that’s not the whole story, when it comes to AI
- + Disinformation is on the rise. How does it work?—Understanding it will lead to better ways to fight it
- + Fighting disinformation gets harder, just when it matters most—Researchers and governments need to co-ordinate; tech companies need to open up
- + The truth behind Olena Zelenska’s $1.1m Cartier haul—The anatomy of a disinformation campaign
- + A promising technique could make blood types mutually compatible—That would ease the demand for type-O donors
- + Many mental-health conditions have bodily triggers—Psychiatrists are at long last starting to connect the dots
- + Climate change is slowing Earth’s rotation—This simplifies things for the world’s timekeepers
- + Memorable images make time pass more slowly—The effect could give our brains longer to process information
- + Large language models are getting bigger and better—Can they keep improving forever?
- + What is screen time doing to children?—Demands grow to restrict young people’s access to phones and social media
- + Locust-busting is getting an upgrade—From pesticides to drones, new technologies are helping win an age-old battle
- + The first week after prison is the deadliest for ex-inmates—Alcohol and drugs kill many in the early days of freedom
- + New technology can keep whales safe from speeding ships—Collisions kill 20,000 every year
- + Bees, like humans, can preserve cultural traditions—Different colonies build in competing architectural styles
- + How Ukraine is using AI to fight Russia—From target hunting to catching sanctions-busters, its war is increasingly high-tech
- + The science that built the AI revolution—A special series of “Babbage”, our podcast on science and technology
- + Why robots should take more inspiration from plants—They would be able to grow, grip and move in more useful ways
- + A stealth attack came close to compromising the world’s computers—The cyber-scare shows why the internet’s crowdsourced code is vulnerable
- + Could weight-loss drugs eat the world?—Scientists are finding that anti-obesity medicines can also help many other diseases
- + Antarctica, Earth’s largest refrigerator, is defrosting—The world must pay more attention to its southern pole
- + Killer whales deploy brutal, co-ordinated attacks when hunting—Their techniques are passed down through the generations
- + A new generation of music-making algorithms is here—Their most useful application may lie in helping human composers
- + How XL Bullies became such dangerous dogs—Generations of breeding are to blame
- + AI models can improve corner-kick tactics—Football coaches should pay attention
- + Elon Musk’s Starship reaches orbit on its third attempt—Though it failed to return to Earth, it’s a step nearer to the stars
- + A flexible patch could help people with voice disorders talk—It would convert vocal-cord movements into sound
- + New York City is covered in illegal scaffolding—Machine learning algorithms could help bring it down
- + How to train your large language model—A new technique is speeding up the process
- + How to harvest moisture from the atmosphere—New technologies could provide water to Earth’s most arid climates
- + Some Labradors have a predisposition to obesity—A gene mutation slows the dogs’ metabolism and makes them constantly hungry
- + Graphene, a wondrous material, starts to prove useful—It could help launch satellites
- + A new technique to work out a corpse’s time of death—AI could make the work of pathologists more accurate
- + Physicists are reimagining dark matter—There might be new particles, forces and perhaps even a Dark Big Bang
- + Scientists can help fetuses by growing tiny replicas of their organs—They could be used to improve treatments in the womb
- + A variety of new batteries are coming to power EVs—All use different chemistries for cost or performance
- + Scientists want to tackle multiple sclerosis by treating the kissing virus—Vaccines and antivirals are already undergoing trials
- + AI models make stuff up. How can hallucinations be controlled?—It is hard to do so without also limiting models’ power
- + Why recorded music will never feel as good as the real thing—The answer, according to neuroscience
- + The challenges of steering a hypersonic plane—At five times the speed of sound, a craft flies through plasma, not air
- + Radio telescopes could spot asteroids with unprecedented detail—They would need radar to do it
- + Long covid is not the only chronic condition triggered by infection—Finding similarities between post-infectious illnesses could lead to better treatments
- + New treatments are emerging for type-1 diabetes—The trick is to outsmart the immune system
- + For the perfect cup of tea, start with the right bacteria—The organisms near a tea plant’s roots can influence the depth of flavour in its leaves
- + What tennis reveals about AI’s impact on human behaviour—Since the introduction of Hawk-Eye, umpires have been biting their tongues
- + A private Moon mission hopes to succeed where others have failed—The odds are stacked against it
- + A 40-year-old nuclear-fusion experiment bows out in style—Its final run set a record for how much energy such reactions can produce
- + The first endometriosis drug in four decades is on the horizon—At last, progress is being made on a condition that affects one woman in ten
- + Scientists have trained an AI through the eyes of a baby—“Chair” and “ball” were among little AI’s first words
- + NASA’s PACE satellite will tackle the largest uncertainty in climate science—It will monitor tiny particles in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans
- + Ancient, damaged Roman scrolls have been deciphered using AI—The new techniques could help rediscover lost works from antiquity
- + How cheap drones are transforming warfare in Ukraine—First-person view drones have achieved near mythical status on the front lines
- + Why prosthetic limbs need not look like real ones—Designers are experimenting with tentacles, spikes and third thumbs
- + AI could accelerate scientific fraud as well as progress—Hallucinations, deepfakes and simple nonsense: there are plenty of risks
- + Why some whales can smell in stereo—One nostril is good. But two can be better
- + Alzheimer’s disease may, rarely, be transmitted by medical treatment—Childhood treatment with contaminated human growth hormone may cause the disease years later
- + How ants persuaded lions to eat buffalo—A tale of elephants, thorn trees, and the sensitivity of ecosystems
- + Scientists have found a new kind of magnetic material—“Altermagnets” have been hiding in plain sight for 90 years
- + Why AI needs to learn new languages—Efforts are under way to make AI fluent in more than just English
- + Can scientists save your morning cup of coffee?—A warming planet threatens the world’s favourite drug
- + Many AI researchers think fakes will become undetectable—Both detection software and watermarks can be defeated
- + Common sense is not actually very common—Very few claims meet with universal agreement
- + The Pentagon is hurrying to find new explosives—Most of America’s existing ones date from the second world war
- + We’re hiring a Science and Technology Correspondent—An opportunity to join our editorial staff in London
- + Researchers in China create the first healthy, cloned rhesus monkey—Their new technique could make the routine cloning of primates easier
- + 2023 was the hottest year ever—And 2024 could be warmer still
- + Simine Vazire hopes to fix psychology’s credibility crisis—Her new job editing the field’s most prestigious journal should help
- + Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling—Contrary to what opponents of wind farms fear
- + Heart attacks, strokes, dementia—can Biden and Trump beat the odds?—What the science of ageing has to say about the presidential election
- + The Economist’s science and technology internship—We invite applications for the 2024 Richard Casement internship
- + An American rocket has a fine debut; not so the Moon lander on board—Private firms are on the way to putting a man back on the lunar surface
- + Vast amounts of the world’s shipping sails unseen—New AI tools could help to eradicate blind spots on the oceans
- + Moon landing apart, Indian science punches far below its weight—The government needs to get out of the way and the private sector should step up
- + A new type of jet engine could revive supersonic air travel—It would also be simpler and more fuel-efficient
- + Delivery robots will transform Christmas—Santa’s hi-tech little helpers
- + How scientists went to an asteroid to sample the Sun—...and how listening to its return helped prepare them for Venus
- + Reviving ancient viruses can help fight modern ones—Insights from evolution can also improve vaccines
- + Jensen Huang says Moore’s law is dead. Not quite yet—3D components and exotic new materials can keep it going for a while longer
- + The excitement of 70,000 Swifties can shake the Earth—As recorded by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network
- + Will lab-grown meat ever make it onto supermarket shelves?—The meat of the future remains too expensive in the present
- + A startup called Anduril has unveiled a reusable missile—Palmer Luckey’s firm hopes “Roadrunner” will shake up America’s arms industry
- + The Extremely Large Telescope will transform astronomy—It will be the world’s biggest optical telescope by far—and a powerful time machine
- + Why chinstrap penguins sleep thousands of times a day—But only for four seconds at a time
- + Politics and technology are pushing oil firms to cut methane—When it comes to climate change, methane is low-hanging fruit
- + Do rising methane levels herald a climate feedback loop?—A scientist notes ominous similarities to the ends of previous ice ages
- + A Google AI has discovered 2.2m materials unknown to science—Zillions of possible crystals exist. AI can help catalogue them
- + Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea—One way to fix an accidentally altered climate is to alter it again deliberately
- + A new way to predict ship-killing rogue waves—And a way to figure out how, exactly, AI works its magic
- + SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon—Elon Musk’s Starlink business could soon be competing with Jeff Bezos’s Kuiper
- + Could newborn neurons reverse Alzheimer’s?—Some scientists think so. Others doubt the cells even exist
- + New ways to pay for research could boost scientific progress—A new field hopes to apply science’s methods to science itself
- + Was an ancient bacterium awakened by an industrial accident?—What lies beneath a Louisiana lake
- + How two teams plan to smash the world sailing-speed record—Neither craft looks much like a sailing boat
- + Israel hopes technology will help it fight in Hamas’s tunnels—The “Gaza Metro” presents a big headache for the IDF
- + Microbiome treatments are taking off—Faecal transplants are just the start of a new sort of medicine
- + A new gonorrhoea drug was developed by a non-profit foundation—Antibiotics are not commercially attractive to pharmaceutical firms
- + Could AI help find valuable mineral deposits?—Computers have keener eyes than geologists
- + Lab-grown models of embryos increasingly resemble the real thing—Embryoids promise many benefits, but pose tricky ethical questions
- + Firms are exploring sodium batteries as an alternative to lithium—Unlike lithium, sodium is cheap and abundant
- + AI can catalogue a forest’s inhabitants simply by listening—That could help check whether reforestation projects work as advertised
- + China approves the world’s first flying taxi—EHang could soon take passengers on pilotless joyrides over Guangzhou
- + What a Serbian cave tells you about the weather 2,500 years ago—Like ice cores, stalagmites preserve a long record of the climate
- + AI could help unearth a trove of lost classical texts—Computers could let archaeologists read hundreds of burnt scrolls from a Roman library
- + It’s not just Paris. Bedbugs are resurgent everywhere—Like bacteria, the insects are becoming resistant to the chemicals used to kill them
- + How to predict the outcome of a coin toss—Coins are fair. Their tossers, less so
- + Scientists have published an atlas of the brain—Cataloguing its components may help understand how it works
- + American and Chinese scientists are decoupling, too—That will be bad for both countries
- + Like human armies, army ants trail crowds of hangers-on—One insect’s leavings is another’s dinner
- + A flying car that anyone can use will soon go on sale—No pilot’s licence will be necessary to fly the Helix
- + The 2023 Nobel prizes honour work that touched millions of lives—Besides mRNA vaccines, they celebrate ultra-fast lasers and tiny prisons for light
- + Did bitcoin leak from an American spy lab?—No. But the theory is spreading online
- + How plundered Gaulish silver ended up in Roman coins—Ancient monetary policy could be seriously aggressive
- + A Nobel prize for quantum dottiness—Best known in high-end TVs, quantum dots could also end up in quantum computers
- + A Nobel prize for electron-watchers—Their work could lead to faster electronics and better disease-screening
- + A Nobel prize in physiology for mRNA vaccines—Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman helped pioneer a technology that saved millions of lives
- + Glaciers on volcanoes could serve as early-warning systems—They could also skew measurements of climate change
- + Sticking together makes bacteria nearly invincible—New treatments are trying to drive them apart
- + Colonies of bacteria could save the Pentagon billions—America’s armies hope to make use of beneficial biofilms
- + Antarctic sea ice is at a record low—The continent seems to be following in the Arctic’s footsteps
- + Finding aliens means studying new sorts of planet—But the places extraterrestrial life can be looked for are not the places it is most likely to thrive
- + A chunk of asteroid is coming to Earth—It could shed light on the origins of life—and how to protect it
- + How common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children—And why many doctors do not realise it
- + How science will be transformed by AI—Learn more in our podcasts and films
- + Could AI transform science itself?—Previous scientific revolutions have been led by academic journals and laboratories. Robots might create the next one
- + How scientists are using artificial intelligence—It is already making research faster, better, and more productive
- + Propane-powered heat pumps are greener—And easier to install in leaky old buildings
- + Animals can be tracked by simply swabbing leaves—DNA gets everywhere. Now it is possible to harvest it
- + Plants don’t have ears. But they can still detect sound—Sometimes they produce it, too
- + Some forms of chronic pain are particularly mysterious—But new approaches show promise
- + Superbatteries will transform the performance of EVs—Provided manufacturers can find enough raw materials to make them
- + Russia’s bid to return to the Moon comes to an ignominious end—All eyes now turn to India
- + A pair of Indian and Russian probes approach the Moon—Both are looking for ice; one will mark a spacefaring first
- + Can computing clean up its act?—The industry consumes as much electricity as Britain—and rising
- + Scientists want to fix tooth decay with stem cells—Regrowing natural enamel would be better than a filling
- + Should women’s football have different rules from men’s?—Women are not just smaller men
- + Airborne taxi ranks are coming to a sky near you—The aircraft should be approved to operate commercially in the next year or so
- + If it can be designed on a computer, it can be built by robots—Powerful new software rewrites the rule of mass production
- + Tiny hitchhikers on viruses could promote resistance to antibiotics—Knowing why could help keep infections at bay
- + An ancient whale-like animal may be the biggest to have ever lived—Dinosaurs were big. Blue whales are bigger. Perucetus colossus might have been bigger still
- + Ukraine’s latest weapons in its war with Russia: 3D-printed bombs—They are cheap—and surprisingly effective
- + The high-tech race to improve weather forecasting—Private companies—and AI—are transforming the weather business
- + Scrapyards adopt new high-tech ways to dismantle cars—Advanced “deproduction” lines are turning the car business into a circular industry
- + A spectacular new fossil shows a mammal making a meal of a dinosaur—The two animals were interrupted during a fight to the death
- + Are heatwaves evidence that climate change is speeding up?—All sorts of records are being broken in all sorts of places
- + A new treatment for Alzheimer’s offers hope—but raises questions, too—Two new drugs have now been proved effective against the disease
- + An enormous—and unexpected—lump of granite has been found on the Moon—The discovery sheds light on lunar history, and suggests how other moons might be explored
- + A Canadian lake could mark the start of humanity’s geological epoch—Plutonium, carbon and plastic mark a new phase in Earth’s history
- + Sabre-tooth tigers and dire wolves were in trouble before they vanished—Bones recovered from tar pits suggest both animals were becoming badly inbred
- + What are the chances of an AI apocalypse?—Professional “superforecasters” are more optimistic about the future than AI experts
- + A gigantic landslide shows the limit to how high mountains can grow—Enough rock fell off a Himalayan peak to bury Paris to the height of the Eiffel Tower
- + New technology could cement Indonesia’s dominance of vital nickel—But harvesting the crucial metal will be bad news for the country’s rainforests
- + A Belgian company wants to create woolly-mammoth burgers—DNA from extinct species is inspiring other business plans, too
- + Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage—Taking nickel from rainforests destroys 30 times more life than getting it from the depths
- + A new gravitational-wave detection has excited astronomers—It could reveal giant black holes—or the beginnings of the universe
- + A new TB vaccine could save 8.5m lives over the next quarter of a century—But testing it will rely on the efforts of two charities
- + Even doctors can struggle to diagnose concussions—A new test could make it much easier
- + Thousands of species of animals probably have consciousness—A group of scientists are trying to track down how it works in the brain
- + An acrimonious debate about covid’s origins will rumble on—An American intelligence report says it could have come from a market—or a lab
- + A risky cancer treatment can be modified to treat immune diseases—The key is to make the treatment temporary, not permanent
- + Sweden wants to build an entire city from wood—Modern timber buildings can be cheap, green and fireproof
- + The bigger-is-better approach to AI is running out of road—If AI is to keep getting better, it will have to do more with less
- + Study drugs make healthy people worse at problem-solving, not better—Users try harder, but are less competent
- + The idea of “holobionts” represents a paradigm shift in biology—These meta-organisms are made up of animals, plants, and the microbiota that live on and inside them
- + There’s more than one way to spay a cat—A new injection could be a cheap, simple solution to a big problem
- + A tiny, ancient hominin may have been surprisingly clever—Small brains seem to be no barrier to culture and art
- + A new study asks whether racehorses have hit their genetic peak—But the breeders trying to improve them may be missing a trick
- + Reproduction without sex is more common than scientists thought—Several vertebrates, including turkeys, snakes and now crocodiles, can do it without doing it
- + Sucking a carbon-neutral fuel out of thin air—To power future cars and planes
- + A Finnish firm thinks it can cut industrial carbon emissions by a third—Running a turbine backwards can produce green heat
- + Temperatures of 50°C will become much more common around the Mediterranean—Spikes above 45°C are likely every year by 2100
- + There is more than one way to make green steel—Why electricity may be better than hydrogen
- + Mosquitoes, wasps and parasitic worms could help make injections less painful—How to improve the humble hypodermic
- + The future of fish farming is on land—New systems cut pollution and allow fish to be raised anywhere in the world
- + Why legal writing is so awful—Never attribute to malice what can be explained by mere convenience
- + Why Venetians are pondering raising their entire city—A €5.5bn flood barrier has bought only a temporary reprieve
- + Artificial brains are helping scientists study the real thing—No model is perfect. But that doesn’t stop them being useful
- + Old tyres can become a climate-friendly fuel—Getting fuel from your wheels
- + Parenting can be bad for the kids—At least, from a genetic point of view
- + The coming years will be the hottest ever—The world could soon breach its 1.5°C target for global warming
- + Humans shed genetic information everywhere they go—There is enough of it to easily identify individuals
- + The market for dinosaur fossils is booming—To the chagrin of some palaeontologists
- + Insects could help turn beer waste into beef—People do not like eating insects. Livestock are less picky
- + Artists hope to turn selfies into comets—A pair of space art projects hope to light up the sky
- + “The” human genome was always a misnomer—A new repository aims to capture the genetic diversity of humanity
As of 1/4/25 7:35pm. Last new 1/3/25 6:37am. Score: 392
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