Science News

By eating dead animals and other waste, vampire squid can live in parts of the ocean too toxic for most predators

Some lizards give predators the slip by shedding their tail, for example, but among mammals, only spiny mice have a similar strategy

All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: vampire squid from hell eats faeces, roots of human conflict, new target for Alzheimer's therapy, and more

The whole world shuddered in April this year as Earth's crust began the difficult process of breaking a tectonic plate

Brain cells that turn toxic in old age and release damaging proteins are linked to the accumulation of plaques in Alzheimer's disease (full text available to subscribers)

This pygmy seahorse was confirmed in Australian waters for the first time during the underwater Catlin Seaview Survey, which is mapping the world's reefs

Chemists want to reengineer metabolic proteins and pathways in microbes so they can convert sugar into commodity chemicals. Now a mutant protein found in cancer cells provides clues to help scientists improve a protein t...

Modern humans in Europe became pale-skinned too recently to have gained the trait by interbreeding with Neanderthals

A way of bumping up the efficiency of thermoelectric materials has tantalising implications for the efficiency of solar panels

Olga Zelenina has been released from prison for now, but will still be put on trial for "doing her job" as an expert witness in drug trafficking case

In The Universal Sense, Seth Horowitz makes a compelling case for our most underrated sense, hearing

Bed nets have helped to reduce malaria cases in Africa – but the pathogen-carrying mosquitoes are changing their behaviour, putting people at risk