A survey posed ethical dilemmas to millions of people to help develop self-driving cars, but some worry the results could bake our biases into new technology | Continue reading
Male humpback whales often sing during mating season, but recordings from the Pacific suggest noise pollution from cargo ships is making them sing less | Continue reading
A study suggests your skin tans most when you spend every other day out of the sun, which has the added effect of reducing DNA damage and premature ageing | Continue reading
An artificial intelligence has taught itself the basics of video game design by watching people play classic games and is now generating new ones of its own | Continue reading
A large simulation of a nerve agent attack last week tested a suite of advanced tools for diagnosing, treating and containing chemical and biological incidents | Continue reading
Remembering the past is useful, but the real purposes of memory may be quite different – from planning for the future to learning to communicate | Continue reading
Guidelines recommend breastfeeding for 6 months, but data suggests that less than half of mothers in England choose or are able to breastfeed beyond six weeks | Continue reading
Rather than a filing cabinet in the mind, it turns out memory is an exquisite illusion that shapes our sense of self. Here's how to understand yours better | Continue reading
Some rocks in Tasmania, Australia, look out of place. Now an analysis suggests they were once part of the rocks that form the Grand Canyon in the US | Continue reading
Last week, Pepper the robot spoke before Parliament, but this kind of stunt distracts from the real issues AI provokes, says Joanna Bryson | Continue reading
When dinosaurs dominated Earth, they somehow coped with low oxygen levels. Now a new finding suggests they may have thrived thanks to bird-like lungs | Continue reading
Brad Goldpaint has won Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2018 thanks to a fantastic image of the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy above the Grand Canyon | Continue reading
The World Health Organization wants governments worldwide to ban the ‘virginity tests’ used by some police, doctors and employers to assess women and girls | Continue reading
Age-related memory loss might be reversed by boosting the effects of a hormone released by bones during exercise | Continue reading
Women are less likely to get breast cancer if they give birth before the age of 30. Now we know the effect kicks in specifically after 33 weeks of pregnancy | Continue reading
The world's longest sea bridge has opened, connecting Hong Kong, Zhuhai, and Macau. It is 55 kilometres or 20 times longer than the Golden Gate Bridge | Continue reading
Building a computer out of the skeletons that hold our cells together could make them smaller and far more energy efficient | Continue reading
Taking a hot bath twice a week may help relieve mild depression. It may work by resetting circadian rhythms, which are often disrupted in people with depression | Continue reading
Mars gets its red colour from oxygen rusting its surface, and it may be hiding even more oxygen in underground brine, which could help microorganisms survive | Continue reading
It's a nightmarish amount of work to figure out how to build a molecule from scratch. Now machines can do it and it will mean a bounty of new drugs and materials | Continue reading
An intricate structure of tiny poles and guy wires spotted in the Amazon has stumped entomologists and amateur bug-spotters | Continue reading
According to the new book by science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, China's long past makes its domination of the moon inevitable | Continue reading
Recording the electrical activity of the fine branches of human neurons has revealed that our brain cells are much more sophisticated than those of other animals | Continue reading
The next generation of geothermal plants will unlock more of Earth's bountiful, underground energy and could allow the technology to finally fulfil its promise | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence is being trained to spot cyberbullying on social media so that hurtful posts can be removed before they reach vulnerable teens | Continue reading
Astronomers are scratching their heads over extremely fast radio bursts. Now they're making a list of all the theories for what - or who - is making them | Continue reading
The more experienced bees in a colony sometimes run around the honeycomb drumming with their bodies - which seems to energise younger colony members | Continue reading
To head off climate disaster requires difficult changes to our lifestyles, says Adam Corner, and politicians must not be afraid to say so | Continue reading
Recording the electrical activity of the fine branches of human neurons has revealed that our brain cells are much more sophisticated than those of other animals | Continue reading
The mantis shrimp has an incredibly fast punch, and it’s because of a structure called a saddle that stores energy and then releases it like an archer's bow | Continue reading
A study has found links between a person's genes and university. But intelligence and other complex traits are shaped by both genetics and environment | Continue reading
On 20 October, the BepiColombo spacecraft will begin a 7-year journey to Mercury, where it will orbit and investigate the many mysteries Mercury | Continue reading
Fasting diets are getting ever more popular, amid promises of weight loss and better health, but does the science stand up? We put the latest one to the test | Continue reading
Genes that alter their expression during healthy pregnancies have been identified for the first time, potentially helping us to predict at-risk pregnancies | Continue reading
In 2016, researchers unveiled 3.7-billion-year-old fossils – a reassessment suggests the ‘fossils’ are actually physical scars left when the rocks were deformed | Continue reading
Health bodies and politicians are aiming for zero suicides, but doctors are warning this ambitious goal is simply unrealistic | Continue reading
A gigantic supercluster of galaxies that existed just two billion years after the big bang could tell us how much dark matter was around in the early universe | Continue reading
Silicon valley’s Breakthrough Prize reveals the 21 scientists who have been recognized this year for work in drug design, biology, astrophysics, and mathematics | Continue reading
The placenta is usually discarded after childbirth but it's a source of mesenchymal stem cells – and they help people regain muscle strength after hip surgery | Continue reading
When two black holes orbit one another, they create a swirling vortex of gravitational waves that could trap any nearby objects like a sci-fi tractor beam | Continue reading
On the publication of Stephen Hawking's final book, his daughter Lucy Hawking reflects on their shared experiences and coming to terms with his death | Continue reading
Do black holes eat information or do zero-energy particles nicknamed "hairs" somehow store it instead? Before he died, Stephen Hawking was working on new ideas, as this exclusive extract shows | Continue reading
A polymer coating turns condoms slippery once it comes in contact with body fluids – and it doesn’t dry out | Continue reading
The prettier the bird, the worse it sings. A study of over 500 species has revealed that birds evolve to attract mates in one of two ways, and don’t combine them | Continue reading
Hellbenders, vampire finches, and mud-daubers were among animals depicted in winning photographs in the 2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition | Continue reading
Mice are more active and have attention problems if their fathers had nicotine in their diet, perhaps because the chemical triggers epigenetic changes in sperm | Continue reading
Some say the astronomical term moonmoon makes light of a serious field of study, but it seems a shame to abandon it for po-faced alternatives | Continue reading
Reports that 2018’s blockbuster video game saw people working 100-hour weeks are troubling, given that tech firms could make workers’ lives easier, says Michael Cook | Continue reading