You ordered a pizza for your party, but the restaurant forgot to slice it – these mathematical tricks can help you cut it evenly, says Katie Steckles | Continue reading
From creating cave art to burying their dead, how we see Neanderthals reveals as much about us as it does about them, argues Ludovic Slimak in a fascinating new book. We may have our closest extinct relatives all wrong - again | Continue reading
Our creation of artificial intelligence has unleashed a third evolutionary process that we don't understand and can't control, warns Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine | Continue reading
People living in urban environments are often alienated from the great outdoors and therefore find it scary and disgusting. This "biophobia" is on the rise, says Graham Lawton | Continue reading
Why does the anti-vaccine movement hate vaccine researcher Peter J. Hotez? His troubling personal account shows a deep disconnect in society over science, and one that needs addressing with the very best persuasion | Continue reading
James Hart Dyke set out to recreate the mountain-top paintings of 19th-century artist Gabriel Loppé. But climate change means the route to the summit is very different today | Continue reading
Cutting carbon emissions means replacing the heating systems in homes, transforming transport and greening steel production. All of these will take time, but the UK prime minister has instead chosen to delay | Continue reading
No sightings of the Pernambuco holly tree had been confirmed since the species was first identified in 1838. Scientists have now found four of the trees in the city Igarassu in north-east Brazil | Continue reading
We tend to think that ancient humans were constantly on the move, but at a site in Zambia there are the first tentative hints that people stayed put and built large wooden dwellings | Continue reading
Brain scans show loss of tissue starting in small areas when people first experience psychosis, and following neural highways until later it encompasses wider regions of the brain | Continue reading
Spider silk has been seen as a greener alternative to artificial fibres like nylon and Kevlar, but spiders are notoriously hard to farm. Now researchers have used CRISPR to genetically engineer silkworms that produce pure spider silk | Continue reading
Astronomers say they have spotted evidence of stars fuelled by the annihilation of dark matter particles. If true, it could solve the cosmic mystery of how supermassive black holes appeared so early | Continue reading
Astronomers say they have spotted evidence of stars fuelled by the annihilation of dark matter particles. If true, it could solve the cosmic mystery of how supermassive black holes appeared so early | Continue reading
After years of political wrangling, wide-ranging online rules are about to become UK law - but complying with and enforcing the regulations won't be easy | Continue reading
An experimental vaccine that erases the immune system’s memory of a molecule could be used to stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes or coeliac disease | Continue reading
Brain regions identified as “language centres” are actually hubs that coordinate the processing of language throughout the brain, argues a controversial new study | Continue reading
RNA, which regulates the activity of DNA, is a crucial part of building an organism - and now researchers have extracted some from an extinct animal for the first time | Continue reading
A leading theory about consciousness called the integrated information theory has been attacked in an open letter from over one hundred researchers in the field | Continue reading
Understanding how the world’s largest-known collection of pink diamonds came to the surface in Australia around 1.3 billion years ago could help us find hidden deposits elsewhere in the world | Continue reading
The language of the therapy room is creeping into everyday life. Psychologist Lucy Foulkes says therapy speak and overpsychologising could do more harm than good | Continue reading
By working out which small mutations will probably be damaging, DeepMind’s AlphaMissense system could help doctors identify the cause of genetic diseases | Continue reading
Recent extreme rainfall that caused flooding across the Mediterranean and contributed to the catastrophic collapse of two dams in Libya was probably made more likely and more intense by climate change | Continue reading
As popular discussion of cannabis has moved away from the drug trade and toward potential medical applications, views about safety and support for legalisation have changed hugely in the US | Continue reading
As popular discussion of cannabis has moved away from the drug trade and toward potential medical applications, views about safety and support for legalisation have changed hugely in the US | Continue reading
Two people with a mutant version of a gene variant – APOE4 – linked to Alzheimer’s showed no signs of dementia, indicating that gene editing to mimic the effect may work against the condition | Continue reading
New estimates for the number of cells in adults and children draw on over 1500 scientific papers detailing the different cell and tissue types in our bodies | Continue reading
Organ donation from newborn babies currently happens very rarely, but could save more lives if hospitals were more open to it | Continue reading
People with Parkinson’s disease have been found to have high levels of an enzyme called DOPA decarboxylase in the fluid around their brain and spinal cord | Continue reading
Deciphering encrypted messages from centuries past is a painstaking process. But linguists and computer scientists are starting to automate it, with some sensational results | Continue reading
The LCLS-II X-ray laser is unprecedentedly bright, and will make it possible to record exactly what atoms and molecules do during photosynthesis and other chemical reactions | Continue reading
New Scientist explains how the latest covid-19 booster vaccines are different from previous ones, and who should get them | Continue reading
People with implants for treating conditions such as blindness, chronic pain and severe headaches have had medical benefits that are now in jeopardy | Continue reading
Asking Google Bard about the Russian president Vladimir Putin tends to be met with refusal when posing questions in Russian - something that doesn't occur as often in English or with other AI chatbots | Continue reading
Organs from older donors can accelerate cellular ageing in transplant recipients, but research in mice suggests this can be reduced with the help of so-called senolytic drugs | Continue reading
When it comes to ancient humans in Asia, we have so many fossils and no consensus on how to make sense of them | Continue reading
The removal of a major anti-vaccine page in November 2020 by Facebook didn’t reduce misinformation and instead led to remaining anti-vaccine content becoming more extreme and getting more engagement | Continue reading
A security researcher has found an old data feed that reveals how full the urine tank on the International Space Station is, allowing them to track when astronauts use the toilet | Continue reading
When tadpoles are raised in white, black or grey trays, they adapt their colour to match their background, which may help them avoid being eaten by birds and fish | Continue reading
Drinks in transparent bottles are difficult to fortify with vitamin D because the supplement breaks down when exposed to UV light, but tiny protein capsules that protect the vitamin could help | Continue reading
A group of specialised immune cells in the gut seems to have a protective role in people with Crohn's disease, and may help doctors predict how the illness will progress | Continue reading
A study of 100 children found that those who experience growing pains are more likely than their peers to get migraines five years later | Continue reading
Experiments suggest microplastic fragments with irregular shapes settle more slowly than spherical ones and may reach the stratosphere | Continue reading
The popular word-guessing game Wordle inspires large numbers of people to either cheat by looking up answers or to stubbornly stick with favourite starting words | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image of a young star spewing out powerful winds that have created a pair of stunning, colourful jets | Continue reading
Insect-sized robots that can crawl, hop and turn by harnessing the power of explosions can be cheaply produced for a range of applications | Continue reading
An independent task force formed by NASA to look into unidentified anomalous phenomena found no evidence of alien craft, and suggests that if we want to find proof of visitors we need better data | Continue reading
Rivers in the US and central Europe are losing their ability to hold oxygen because of rising temperatures, which could put fish at risk | Continue reading
US regulators could soon authorise MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder after positive results in the largest clinical trial to date | Continue reading