Girls and boys show no cognitive differences in mathematical ability during infancy and early childhood across multiple tasks. To compare boys’ and girls’ early mathematical thinking, Alyssa Kersey and colleagues at the University of Rochester and University of Pittsburgh examine … | Continue reading
Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is a severe form of nausea and vomiting associated with unfavourable outcomes during pregnancy. Here, Fejzo et al. perform genome-wide scans for HG and pregnancy nausea and vomiting and identify genetic associations at two loci implicating the genes GD … | Continue reading
European nations see biggest increases in use of stimulants such as Ritalin by people seeking brain-boosting effects. | Continue reading
DNA-strand-displacement reactions are used to implement a neural network that can distinguish complex and noisy molecular patterns from a set of nine possibilities—an improvement on previous demonstrations that distinguished only four simple patterns. | Continue reading
A supramolecule that inhibits the colony stimulating factor 1 and SIRPα receptors on macrophages significantly enhances antitumour and antimetastatic efficacies in two aggressive animal models of melanoma and breast cancer. | Continue reading
Programmers turn to voice-command tools to give their hands a rest. | Continue reading
Early results from birth-cohort have public-health implications, as other groups use the data to investigate the microbiome and mental health. | Continue reading
Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery that has long vexed philosophers. | Continue reading
The ability to control very small groups of neurons could have big implications for brain science. | Continue reading
Humans are masters of dexterity. But robots are catching up. | Continue reading
Quirks in ‘Oumuamua’s path through the Solar System helped researchers solve a case of mistaken identity. | Continue reading
Death rates in later life flatten out and suggest there may be no fixed limit on human longevity, countering some previous work. | Continue reading
Technique demonstrated in E. coli suggests ways to record key events in a cell's life. | Continue reading
ʻOumuamua—the first known interstellar object to have entered the Solar System—is probably a comet, albeit with unusual dust and chemical properties owing to its origin in a distant solar system. | Continue reading
One-way propagation of light through a standard telecommunications fibre is demonstrated by coupling the fibre to a rapidly rotating silica-glass sphere. | Continue reading
The detection of complex organic molecules with masses higher than 200 atomic mass units in ice grains emitted from Enceladus indicates the presence of a thin organic-rich layer on top of the moon’s subsurface ocean. | Continue reading
Trump puts tariffs on Chinese technology and China retaliates with taxes on US chemicals. | Continue reading
Stop saying that publication metrics don’t matter, and tell early-career researchers what does, says John Tregoning. | Continue reading
Latest study suggests that emissions of the potent greenhouse gas could be coming from faulty equipment. | Continue reading
As machine learning infiltrates society, scientists are trying to help ward off injustice. | Continue reading
The idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by just six degrees of separation was explained by the ‘small-world’ network model 20 years ago. What seemed to be a niche finding turned out to have huge consequences. | Continue reading
Observations of two absorbers of highly ionized oxygen in the X-ray spectrum of a quasar account for the missing baryons in the Universe. | Continue reading
Some fifteen years after the human genome was sequenced, researchers still can’t agree on how many genes it contains. | Continue reading
By studying the properties of almost 200 disk galaxies, it is shown that modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), or MOND-like alternative theories of gravity based on the existence of a fundamental acceleration scale, are ruled out as fundamental theories for galaxies at more than 10 … | Continue reading
The scale and nature of energy investments under diverging technology and policy futures is of great importance to decision makers. Here, a multi-model study projects investment needs under countries’ nationally determined contributions and in pathways consistent with achieving t … | Continue reading
Scientists pinpoint the stem cells that bestow the power of regeneration on planaria. | Continue reading
During cardiac tissue formation it is unclear whether newly generated myocytes originate from cardiac progenitor cells or from pre-existing cardiomyocytes. Here, the authors use a stochastic four-colour reporter system (Rainbow) to identify the source of new cardiomyocytes during … | Continue reading
Existing methods to extract structural information from single-molecule scattering measurements require large number of photons per image. Here the authors discuss a method to reconstruct the structure of a molecule from X-ray scattering data by using only three photons per image … | Continue reading
Lasers offer insight into the heaviest elements. | Continue reading
Health workers battling Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo can diagnose the virus in hours, instead of days. | Continue reading
Anil Ananthaswamy parses Sabine Hossenfelder’s analysis of why the field is at an impasse. | Continue reading
Four new elements were added in 2015 with great fanfare — but some researchers complain the announcement was premature. | Continue reading
They fear the data-sharing website will become less open, but other researchers say the buyout could make GitHub more useful. | Continue reading
Planned changes threaten open science, research advocates warn. | Continue reading
From possums to elephants, animals tend to avoid times of the day when people are out and about. | Continue reading
Fifteen-year-old Opportunity rover enters low-power mode in attempt to survive extreme tempest. | Continue reading
Less sea ice allowed ocean swells to flex weakened ice shelves in Antarctica, contributing to their collapse. | Continue reading
The ideal drugs for treating schizophrenia are postulated to selectively block the D2 dopamine receptor with optimum binding kinetics. The structure of D2 bound to an antipsychotic sheds light on how to design such drugs. | Continue reading
Richard Taylor pays tribute to the Apollo astronaut who beautifully meshed science and art. | Continue reading
White matter properties correlate with cognitive performance in a number of domains. Here the authors show that altering a child’s educational environment though a targeted intervention program induces rapid, large-scale changes in the white matter, and that these changes track t … | Continue reading