Squash bugs need certain kinds of gut bacteria to survive, but young nymphs don’t get any from their parents – so they have to acquire them by eating other adults’ faeces | Continue reading
Warmer temperatures increase the amount of precipitation that falls as rain instead of snow, leading to more extreme rainfall in snowy places | Continue reading
By looking at electrical signals octopuses produce in their brain while asleep and awake, researchers have gathered some of the best evidence yet that the cephalopods dream | Continue reading
Also known as The Iceman, Wim Hof's claims that his breathing and cold exposure methods will "keep your body and mind in its optimal natural state" lack good scientific evidence | Continue reading
A company called Moolec has created transgenic soya beans called “Piggy Sooy” in which a quarter of the protein is pig protein rather than plant protein | Continue reading
Honeybees brought to the US from Europe and Africa tend to move pollen between flowers on the same plant more than native bees do. This appears to lower the quality of some plants’ offspring | Continue reading
Many planets are thought to be flung away from their stars, but it’s possible that some get trapped on the way out – and one could be lurking at the edge of our own solar system | Continue reading
Five malaria cases have been reported in Florida and Texas, all of which were acquired through local transmission | Continue reading
A record-setting heatwave in Texas and Mexico is affecting tens of millions of people and straining power grids, and it is likely to continue for the next week | Continue reading
An expedition to hunt for fragments of a possible interstellar meteor has found 40 tiny iron spherules on the sea floor – but whether they are truly interstellar is controversial | Continue reading
Rising rates of vegetarianism and veganism may be causing iron deficiency, a condition that also commonly occurs due to heavy periods | Continue reading
Today’s complex societies are pretty homogeneous, but experimental cultures, past and present, teach us how to think more creatively about the way we live | Continue reading
Anthropology and archaeology are revealing that a human society can take myriad forms, which can teach us how to build a modern society that is more equal, resilient and stable | Continue reading
In an evolutionary eyeblink, our species has gone from hunting and gathering to living in complex societies. We need to rethink the story of this monumental transition | Continue reading
Two separate groups of orangutans have been observed making calls that use two sounds simultaneously. The finding could help researchers better understand the origins of human communication | Continue reading
Countries have failed to deliver on promises to create new marine protected areas in the seas around Antarctica, leaving a unique ecosystem vulnerable to climate change and overfishing | Continue reading
Northvolt says that its massive factory in Sweden will soon produce enough batteries each year to power a million electric cars, with a much smaller carbon footprint than those made in China | Continue reading
Intermittent fasting, when all food is eaten within an eight hour window each day, leads to people eating about 400 fewer calories per day | Continue reading
Female dolphins modify their vocalisations in the presence of their offspring, mirroring the ‘baby talk’ used by humans | Continue reading
Evidence is mounting that megalodon could have been warm-blooded, unlike most modern sharks, hinting at how it grew to be so big and also why it went extinct | Continue reading
Twenty-five years ago, a neuroscientist and a philosopher bet a case of fine wine on whether scientists would have cracked the neural basis of consciousness by 2023. Now, one of them conceded the prize | Continue reading
A study in mice has shown that eating during what would normally be a resting period helps build muscle fibres needed for endurance running, though this has yet to be confirmed in humans | Continue reading
If you’re struggling for time or motivation, here are evidence-based hacks that maximise the effects of the exercise you do manage – from breathing tricks to the mindset shift that can reduce body fat | Continue reading
A genetic condition that sees children develop almost no teeth or sweat glands can now be treated by injecting a protein into the amniotic fluid, in just one of a number of new therapies that act before a child is even born | Continue reading
Frances Haugen leaked thousands of pages of Facebook's internal documents. The revelations she uncovered about, among many other things, hate speak and eating disorder content on the social network are unforgettable; sadly, her account of the story is | Continue reading
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope is scheduled to launch on 1 July and then begin its mission of studying the effects of dark energy and dark matter | Continue reading
Deep-sea Osedax worms, known to consume whale bones and the remains of bony fish, also feed on shark teeth after the predators die | Continue reading
A computer vision system uses photographs of someone’s face from different angles to reconstruct the scene they are viewing | Continue reading
Earth appears to have less mass beneath a certain part of the Indian Ocean compared with the rest of the planet. Plumes of magma at the location could explain why | Continue reading
A fragmentation event has given astronomers a new way to study a comet from the outer reaches of the solar system | Continue reading
A soft, tubular robot can bend, twist, expand and contract when exposed to different intensities of light | Continue reading
A new technique enables 3D printing of miniature heart chambers called ventricles that can beat on their own, and may one day help create whole hearts for transplantation | Continue reading
New Scientist talks to actor Mark Rylance, writer Stephen Brown and director Tom Morris about their new play Dr Semmelweis, which spotlights the work of this maverick 19th-century obstetrician | Continue reading
Falling oxygen levels caused by sewage and hot weather saw a specialised boat deployed for 11 days in August to save plants and fish | Continue reading
More than 50,000 dead butterflies were traded on eBay in a one-year period, including endangered species protected by international treaties on wildlife trade | Continue reading
Astronomers have found a blast of gamma rays from space that seems to have been caused by two stellar corpses smashing together in a way that’s never been seen before | Continue reading
A ‘shocklingly simple’ design based on kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, makes sticky tape 60 times stronger, but easy to peel off in one direction | Continue reading
IonQ has become the latest company to claim its quantum computer is more powerful than any other computer in existence - despite not having built it yet. But how exactly do you benchmark a quantum computer? | Continue reading
In a study involving 80 people with ruptured anterior cruciate ligaments, 90 per cent had signs of healing after three months of wearing a specialised knee brace | Continue reading
The stars that orbit close to the Milky Way's supermassive black hole are already tough to explain – but there also seems to be some stars missing | Continue reading
We know there are stars moving fast enough to escape the Milky Way, so the same is probably true of other galaxies. Now, simulations suggest there could be almost 4000 stars from the Andromeda galaxy in the Milky Way today | Continue reading
The big white spots seen on the wings of migratory monarch butterflies may have evolved to help them fly more efficiently on their long, hot journeys | Continue reading
Symbols have been found carved on the walls of a cave in France that was inhabited by Neanderthals before being sealed off at least 57,000 years ago | Continue reading
We in science and medicine aren't immune to the biases that lead to discrimination. It's time to take concrete steps to put science on a fairer and more productive path, say Michal Elovitz, Stephen Quake and Hannah Valantine | Continue reading
Travelling is a great time for a rethink, whether it's about the human mind or the evolution of cats – or even the importance of red algae for Earth. Our selection of great books has it covered | Continue reading
I can take it as a given that people have an intuition for the meaning of mass, but traditional explanations can feel unsatisfactory. Even the standard model doesn't give us all the answers, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | Continue reading
Christopher Paolini's Fractal Noise and Temi Oh's More Perfect are among our top sci-fi novels to read while you're away | Continue reading
People are increasingly grappling with the impacts of a shifting climate in Bangladesh, something that journalist Fabeha Monir has has captured in a series of photos | Continue reading