Now, perhaps more than ever, engineers and scientists have been taking inspiration from nature when developing new technologies. This is also true for the smallest flying structure humans have built to date. | Continue reading
Reservoir computing is already one of the most advanced and most powerful types of artificial intelligence that scientists have at their disposal – and now a new study outlines how to make it up to a million times faster on certain tasks. | Continue reading
A tabletop gravitational wave detector based around a piece of ringing quartz has recorded two mysterious signals in its first 153 days of operation. | Continue reading
There are around 7,000 human languages that we know of worldwide, and while they're all unique, they're also more similar than you might have realized – particularly when it comes to the grammar, or the way that sentences can be formed and used. | Continue reading
Dogs often seem uncannily shrewd about what we're trying to tell them. | Continue reading
Medical news is full of stories about promising new treatments for challenging conditions, or for additional health benefits of routine behaviors and habits. Who doesn't want to feel good about drinking coffee or eating chocolate? | Continue reading
Researchers have found intriguing evidence in mice that a blood-to-brain pathway could be responsible for introducing the toxic particles that contribute to Alzheimer's disease into our grey matter. | Continue reading
When somebody near you is fidgeting, it can be annoying. Distracting. Even excruciating. But why? | Continue reading
Scientists have found what may be the earliest evidence of clothing manufacture in a cave in Morocco, dating back 120,000 years. | Continue reading
Having evolved with storytelling as a means to pass information across generations, our brains are powerfully attuned to narratives, so much so that we can recall well-told stories better than basic facts. | Continue reading
The natural world holds beauty even at a microscopic scale, and each year, Nikon's Small World photo competition opens our eyes to a whole new realm of diminutive detail. | Continue reading
Given that our first direct detections confirming the existence of black holes only took place in this century, humanity can be forgiven for not knowing a few things about these mysterious cosmic objects. | Continue reading
Astronomy is a bit different from many sciences because you only have a sample size of 1. The cosmos contains everything we can observe, so astronomers can't study multiple universes to see how our Universe ticks. | Continue reading
The homes we create on Mars and the Moon may end up being just a tad less hygienic than the structures we live in here on Earth. | Continue reading
The entire time the Moon has been sitting up there, quietly orbiting Earth, it turns out it's actually been doing something incredible. Something that could help teach us about the early Universe. | Continue reading
Tardigrades are undoubtedly weird. Dehydrate them into glass, then fire them out of a gun, and once you rehydrate them you can still have a living creature. Their outsides aren't the only thing that's tough either, with scientists finding last year t | Continue reading
We know that spending hour after hour sitting down isn't good for us, but just how much exercise is needed to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk? A 2020 study suggests about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do | Continue reading
Tardigrades are undoubtedly weird. Dehydrate them into glass, then fire them out of a gun, and once you rehydrate them you can still have a living creature. Their outsides aren't the only thing that's tough either, with scientists finding last year t | Continue reading
Ivermectin is the active ingredient in many widely available anti-parasite medications used to treat infections of worms, scabies, and lice in humans and livestock. | Continue reading
There's a storm in your teacup of the likes we barely understand. Water molecules flipping about madly, reaching out to one another, grabbing hold and letting go in unique ways that defy easy study. | Continue reading
A case study of a US man who lost vision in his right eye for two days could provide further insight into how SARS-CoV-2 messes with our immune system in ways that cause the body to attack itself. | Continue reading
Picturing how our species might appear in the far future often invites wild speculation over stand-out features such as height, brain size, and skin complexion. Yet subtle shifts in our anatomy today demonstrate how unpredictable evolution can be. | Continue reading
The antique violins made by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri in the 17th and 18th centuries are still very much sought after by modern-day musicians. Now, a new study reveals one of the hidden reasons why: the chemical treatments applied to t | Continue reading
Gravity is the weird, mysterious glue that binds the Universe together, but that's not the limit of its charms. We can also leverage the way it warps space-time to see distant objects that would be otherwise much more difficult to make out. | Continue reading
The human mind is more resistant to the march of time than conventional wisdom suggests. Like a fine wine, some parts even get better with age. | Continue reading
Sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, life on Earth was ignited into existence from molecular beginnings, and branched through time into the spectacular array of entities we know and love today. So goes the current line of thinking. | Continue reading
It has just rained at the summit of Greenland's ice sheet for the first time in recorded history, in yet another worrying milestone in our ecological unravelling. | Continue reading
People who struggle to recover from COVID-19 could be battling more than just SARS-CoV-2. Their immune systems might also be involved with another virus as well. | Continue reading
For the first time, one of the deadliest forms of brain tumor has been successfully 3D-bioprinted, resulting in the most complete lab-grown model yet. | Continue reading
In a significant achievement, physicists have produced a two-dimensional supersolid in the lab for the first time. | Continue reading
Unlike numerous other animals, cats show a strange unwillingness to work for their food. | Continue reading
Mini brains grown in a lab from stem cells have spontaneously developed rudimentary eye structures, scientists report in a fascinating new paper. | Continue reading
Nuclear scientists using lasers the size of three football fields said Tuesday they had generated a huge amount of energy from fusion, possibly offering hope for the development of a new clean energy source. | Continue reading
Mini brains grown in a lab from stem cells have spontaneously developed rudimentary eye structures, scientists report in a fascinating new paper. | Continue reading
Until recently, type 2 diabetes has mainly been managed by controlling risk factors – such as high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar (glucose) levels – usually by prescribing drugs. | Continue reading
A huge horde of mixed animal bones, including the remains of humans, has been found in an ancient lava tube in Saudi Arabia. | Continue reading
There's a whole lot of consequences from the current global pandemic that we didn't see coming, and worsening eyesight among children might be one of them. | Continue reading
People in New Zealand have cut down so many trees, some native insects are losing their wings. | Continue reading
Young people who contract COVID-19, but who are otherwise healthy, show a disrupted fight-or-flight response that can last for months, according to new research. | Continue reading
According to theory, if you smash two photons together hard enough, you can generate matter: an electron-positron pair, the conversion of light to mass as per Einstein's theory of special relativity. | Continue reading
Life with type 1 diabetes is a juggling act of diet, exercise, and insulin therapy to maintain normal blood sugar levels. While there's no shortage of solutions in the works for trying to make diabetics' lives easier, a promising new approach focuses | Continue reading
The novel coronavirus appears to have somehow jumped from humans to wild deer in some parts of the United States. | Continue reading
When you're swimming in a large body of water, calculating its volume or discerning the locations of distant floating objects isn't easy. The same is true for our galaxy. | Continue reading
Hearing is a skill most of us take for granted. But new research suggests that adults should listen out for changes in their hearing, as hearing difficulties might be linked to developing dementia at an older age. | Continue reading
The relentlessness of chronic pain wears you down. Beyond being a physical distraction in and of itself, it disrupts sleep, interferes with work and relationships, and can even alter the way we process emotions by causing physiological changes in ou | Continue reading
A star just 35 light-years away has been found to host a number of rocky exoplanets, and one that has a good chance of habitability. | Continue reading
If you're wondering just how advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems are getting, then know this: the US military is testing an experimental AI network tasked with identifying likely future events worthy of closer attention, and days before | Continue reading
Neurotransmitters are chemical substances crucial to the proper functioning of the brain, responsible for carrying messages between neurons and other kinds of cells. | Continue reading