If there's a ventilator shortage, doctors and ethicists say priority should be given to people with the best chance of recovery and most years likely left to live | Continue reading
A new dinosaur species related to velociraptors has been found in New Mexico, and its claws were larger and stronger than average | Continue reading
Climate change is leading to lower numbers of marine life towards the equator – including mammals, birds, fish and plankton – while populations nearer the poles increase | Continue reading
The infection is being eliminated as a public health threat by countries that introduce widespread testing and treatment for those at risk, and it seems to be working | Continue reading
Neil Ferguson, whose modelling has informed the UK's coronavirus strategy, says that the need for intensive care beds will come close to, but not exceed, national capacity | Continue reading
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic | Continue reading
Finding out how flight evolved or animals moved onto land is all about a collision of palaeontology and genetics, argue two new books | Continue reading
Always forgetting birthdays? Terrible at staying in touch? New tech promises to turn you into the best buddy ever. We put it to the test | Continue reading
The new coronavirus is upending our lives, but simple actions can slow its spread, help our neighbours, foster a sense of togetherness and rejuvenate our immune systems | Continue reading
A new book from Jim Al-Khalili makes cutting-edge physics easily understandable and makes it clear why he fell in love with the subject as a teenager | Continue reading
Our measurements of the Hubble constant can't seem to come up with a consistent answer. What we learn next may alter our view of the cosmos, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | Continue reading
The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know – but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making | Continue reading
A shrimp-like creature found 6 kilometres down in the Pacific Ocean’s deepest trench has been named Eurythenes plasticus after the microplastics found in its gut | Continue reading
We don’t have enough evidence yet to know if recovering from covid-19 induces immunity, or whether any immunity would give long-lasting protection against the coronavirus | Continue reading
Your immune system ages too, weakening as you get older and making you more susceptible to infections. Fortunately, we are discovering plenty of things you can do to turn back the clock and stay healthy | Continue reading
A number of potential drugs for treating the coronavirus are in trials. There are some promising candidates but it’s unclear if they’ll help those who need them most | Continue reading
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic | Continue reading
The economic and healthcare policies pursued by the US in recent years have failed to prioritise public health and made it vulnerable to a pandemic. Could things be different? | Continue reading
People with covid-19 appear to be most contagious 15 hours before their symptoms start, and many people may not even go on to develop noticeable symptoms | Continue reading
The presence of bacteria that break down fibre in a mother’s gut is linked to a reduced risk of food allergies in her child’s first year of life | Continue reading
Greta Thunberg says she and her father, Swedish actor Svante Thunberg, appear to have been infected by the coronavirus, though they have not been tested as their native Sweden is only doing so for severe cases | Continue reading
An analysis of daily steps taken by around 5000 people in the US has found that a higher step count is linked to a lower yearly risk of death, though the effect tails off above 12,000 steps | Continue reading
A tiny meteorite found in Antarctica doesn’t match any asteroid or comet we know of. Instead, it must have come from a mystery parent body that’s full of water | Continue reading
Shards of pottery that was likely used for transporting food suggest a mountain site in the Czech Republic may have been a nature retreat for Iron Age religious hermits | Continue reading
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic | Continue reading
Electric cars already have a bigger climate change impact than fossil-fuel burning cars in almost every part of the world, according to researchers | Continue reading
The UK government has published details of the scientific advice behind its strategies to tackle the covid-19 outbreak, but outside experts say it is missing key points and hasn't been implemented properly | Continue reading
David Attenborough’s highly personal new documentary A Life On Our Planet allows the nature filmmaker to say what he really thinks about our destructive ways | Continue reading
Google is in talks with the UK government to see how it can share aggregated and anonymised location data from its apps to show whether coronavirus social distancing measures are working | Continue reading
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic | Continue reading
A number of difference forces are involved in producing sound when a bubble pops, and the exact noise depends on the chemical properties of the soap film | Continue reading
The first-ever interstellar comet is showing signs of brightening, suggesting it may have been heated up as it passed near to the sun | Continue reading
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic | Continue reading
The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft bombed the asteroid Ryugu in April. Analysing the crater it left behind suggests Ryugu is a relative youngster at 9 million years old | Continue reading
Neurons engineered to produce electrically conducting polymers on their surface could one day be used to treat epilepsy or to better control prosthetics | Continue reading
Ancient humans in Africa mixed far more than we thought, according to new findings revealed by sequencing the genomes of a diverse group of people from across the world | Continue reading
Models of what impact interventions will have on the new coronavirus's spread are imperfect, so factors other than the science play an important role too, says David Adam | Continue reading
Plants need nitrates for good growth, but they can also accumulate in leaves of crops like rocket. So are foods like this safe to eat, wonders James Wong | Continue reading
Plants need nitrates for good growth, but they can also accumulate in salad leaves. So are they safe to eat, wonders James Wong | Continue reading
We already know that microplastics are everywhere, and now it seems simply opening plastic packaging can create thousands of tiny fragments | Continue reading
Penguins are the first seabirds we have recorded making sounds under water – they may be calling out for help when they hunt or making noise to disorient their prey | Continue reading
In winter, the veins of leaves don’t get completely covered in frost. Mimicking this effect could be the best way to create ice-resistant surfaces | Continue reading
The gut distinguishes sugar from low-calorie sweeteners, and tells the brain what has been eaten within milliseconds, studies in mice and human cells suggest | Continue reading
The highest dwelling mammal – a mouse – has been discovered at 6700 metres above sea level, where conditions are so harsh they have been compared to Mars | Continue reading
Venus’s surface is covered in strange wiggling lines that may form when colossal stacks of lava are carved by gentle winds over hundreds of millions of years | Continue reading
The ultrasound technology used to image fetuses is being adapted to visualise the brain, perhaps allowing for rapid diagnosis of stroke or sports head injuries | Continue reading
Between 1978 and 2015, parasitic Anisakis worms found in fish increased 283 times – which means sushi is more likely to be infected, as are marine mammals such as dolphins and whales | Continue reading
A 2000-year-old skeleton found in Spain belonged to a lapdog that may have been born thousands of kilometres to the east and traded during Roman times | Continue reading