Some of the most important inventions – wheels, nets and the written word – have creators lost to time, even though their impact shaped the world we live in | Continue reading
Seeing whether sperm is capable of puncturing, and ultimately fertilising, an egg would help people choose the type of fertility treatment with the highest chances of success | Continue reading
A malaria vaccine that is 77 per cent effective in clinical trials has been approved for use in children 3 to 5 years old, the group most vulnerable to dying from the disease | Continue reading
Forests in eastern Africa started turning into grassland 10 million years earlier than previously thought, which may have driven the evolution of upright apes | Continue reading
The warming climate is causing soils to lose their moisture more quickly, resulting in damaging, rapid-onset droughts | Continue reading
Heavy rain has deluged parts of Florida, triggering the total shutdown of Fort Lauderdale airport. Here's what we know about the situation and whether it is a sign of climate change | Continue reading
A study in care homes found that preparing meals with potassium-enriched salt, instead of regular salt, lowered the blood pressure of people aged over 55 and reduced their risk of cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks and strokes | Continue reading
Mexican spadefoot toad embryos that sense lots of shrimp in the water before they are born grow bigger and stronger jaws, ready for their first meals after hatching | Continue reading
A mathematical model based on observing yellow anacondas in the lab shows that if they are light and muscular enough, they can jump away from danger in an S-shape motion similar to sidewinding of much smaller snakes that live in the sand | Continue reading
The JUICE mission to explore three of Jupiter’s icy moons and examine whether they have the right conditions for life is launching on 13 April. Watch the live launch coverage here | Continue reading
People who work in the wine industry may have fewer and less diverse bacteria in their nose compared with non-vocational wine drinkers, which could affect their sense of smell and taste | Continue reading
The configuration of brown and white stripes in pygmy zebra octopuses (Octopus chierchiae) varies between individuals, which could help researchers monitor them in the wild | Continue reading
Tests of marijuana sold legally in Colorado found that most products contained significantly less THC, the main psychoactive component, than was listed on the packaging | Continue reading
A study of an ancient bone from Spain with a strange pattern of notches hints that it was used by early Homo sapiens in Europe as a punch board for making holes in leather | Continue reading
A lighting device that reuses its infrared light to conserve energy is as efficient as some LED lights, which could contribute to fewer carbon emissions while retaining a natural glow | Continue reading
The number of people seeking psychotherapy is on the rise, but the field has long been seen as unscientific. It is time to approach it with the same diligence as we do other treatments | Continue reading
Through staving off dementia symptoms, boosting brainpower and even being a different version of yourself, speaking many languages is a great strategy for life, argues a new book from Viorica Marian | Continue reading
It can be hard to explain the realities of the natural world to children, but we need to acknowledge the suffering of wild things, says Richard Smyth | Continue reading
More like a village than a city, Mastodon has less cruelty and bad-faith debates than Twitter, in my experience Could it be a social media platform to trust, asks Annalee Newitz | Continue reading
What makes a great new trait evolve and then stay dormant for years? Andreas Wagner's new book explores the innovations of nature – and human culture | Continue reading
From sheep grazing in a field of solar panels to natural wine chilling, Islands of Energy by photographer Luigi Avantaggiato captures the greening of Italy at every scale | Continue reading
Procrastination can steal hours of our time, but the latest research has some answers about how to reduce it, finds David Robson in his new 60-second psychology column | Continue reading
The front fins of skates emerge from their heads as huge wings and now we know how they can develop in this way | Continue reading
The function of the mysterious perfume blended by male orchid bees from the flowers they visit has finally been figured out | Continue reading
Graphene can change its electrical resistance in response to a magnetic field quicker than other materials, such as graphite or bismuth, which could one day change how we store data | Continue reading
Bacteria, fungi and other microbes, which are vital to life on Earth, were long thought impervious to threats endangering larger lifeforms. Now biologists are warning of a microbial extinction event | Continue reading
Psychotherapy has never been more available and yet, with so many options, it can be hard to know where to start. Thankfully, researchers are getting to grips with what really works and why | Continue reading
Researchers have put a sapphire crystal containing quadrillions of atoms into a superposition of quantum states, bringing quantum effects into the macroscopic world | Continue reading
Mice that received gut microbes from children with epilepsy on the ketogenic diet were protected from seizures. The finding suggests the microbiome is behind the diet's seizure-reducing effect | Continue reading
Wind and solar reached a record 12 per cent of global electricity generation in 2022 - and look set to keep growing | Continue reading
Elastic tendons let seahorses suck in water around eight times faster than they could using muscle power alone | Continue reading
High-resolution imagery has revealed that sandgrouse have tightly-coiled filaments in their feathers that unfurl when wet, allowing them trap water like a sponge for transport | Continue reading
Entangled photons of light have been sent through a loop of conventional optical fibre under the noisy New York streets – a starting point to building an unhackable quantum internet | Continue reading
Jupiter’s icy moons are thought to host buried oceans that could have the right conditions for life, and the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission is about to go find out if they do | Continue reading
There is probably a plane of knowledge beyond the grasp of human minds. But mathematician and physicist David Wolpert says it is still possible to explore this unimaginable realm | Continue reading
The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia on 11 April sent plumes of volcanic ash many kilometres into the air and could affect flights | Continue reading
Some planets outside our solar system are thought to be tidally locked, with one side always facing their star, creating a world divided into hot and cold. Now, it seems this set-up may not be permanent after all, allowing the two sides to flip | Continue reading
Birds can see in ultraviolet, so a form of camouflage made using natural plant dyes that helps conceal objects in both visible and UV light could prove useful for hunters | Continue reading
As the smallest planet in the solar system, and the closest to the sun, Mercury is hard to spot - but 11 April offers potentially good viewing | Continue reading
The Crab nebula is one of the most thoroughly studied cosmic objects ever, but new observations have revealed that it’s far more complex than anyone accounted for | Continue reading
Reaching the maximum feeding capacity from current agricultural land would require a global shift to plant-based diets and vast amounts of industrial fertiliser, a study has found | Continue reading
A three-year drought in Cape Town, South Africa, may have been worsened by high-income people filling their swimming pools and irrigating their gardens | Continue reading
As far as we know, there are three main ingredients required for life: liquid water, an energy source and complex chemistry. Do Europa or Enceladus have them all? | Continue reading
A technique to 3D print conductive circuits directly into living organisms could one day be used in humans | Continue reading
A device made of cylinders tethered to the ocean floor could lessen the ferocity of waves, preventing them from eroding the shore | Continue reading
The rate of evaporation at US reservoirs is speeding up, and could significantly increase by the middle of the century if emissions continue to rise | Continue reading
Studying donated embryonic and fetal brains has shown some of the genetic pathways involved in certain conditions, such as schizophrenia | Continue reading
It has been thought that a period of rapid growth in adolescence is unique to humans, but markers in urine suggest male chimpanzees in the wild may have one too | Continue reading