Science News

SHEDDING kilos is harder than putting them on, which is why the weight-loss industry is so big. Its latest manifestation is online weight-management sites: social networks for the plump in which participants can set a ta...

Archaeological work has come to a halt in Libya, and researchers are worried about the country's ancient sites, from Roman ruins that have suffered rocket attacks to prehistoric rock paintings that have been vandalized.

Lethargic mice unexpectedly perk up when injected with immune cells from bullied mice, a discovery which could point to new depression treatments

Little is known about how baleen whales process low-frequency sounds. Now, researchers have found that baleen whales have specialized skulls that can capture the energy of low frequencies and direct it toward their ear b...

A collaboration of researchers from Canada, Europe and the USA have experimentally produced Möbius strips from the polarization of light, confirming a theoretical prediction that it is possible for light's electromagnet...

Valium, one of the best known antianxiety drugs, produces its calming effects by binding with a particular protein in the brain. But the drug has an almost equally strong affinity for a completely different protein. Unde...

A collaboration of researchers from Canada, Europe and the USA have experimentally produced Möbius strips from the polarization of light, confirming a theoretical prediction that it is possible for light's electromagnet...

Meet miners, outlaws and sheriffs all striving to get ahead in the volatile new world of virtual money. Financial Times reporter Kadhim Shubber is your guide (full text available to subscribers)

A 60-year-old businessman lost his job and much of his personality to dementia. But he learned to play the saxophone exceptionally well, according to a new report of his case.

Baby chicks seem to count from left to right just like humans, suggesting the mental representation of the number line is millions of years old.

Football fans, take note: The outcome of this weekend's Super Bowl, along with other major sporting events, may depend on whether the players are night owls or early birds, a new study suggests.

Experiments with baby chickens suggest they perceive lower values as lying to the left of higher values, similar to how humans use a number-line. If true, this may date back to a common ancestor of birds and people.

The general public and scientists disagree on a wide range of scientific topics, from the safety of genetically modified foods to the cause of climate change.

A decade ago, physicists suggested that certain properties of light can twist into a one-sided loop – now there's proof

A spider commonly found in garden centres in Britain is giving fresh insights into how to spin incredibly long and strong fibres just a few nanometres thick.

By combining illusions that change the way our brain represents our body, we were able to test whether a change in your self would result in a change in your implicit racial bias.

The elusive and rare Sierra Nevada red fox has been spotted in Yosemite National Park for the first time in nearly a century.

After a long wait and a great track record transmuting science into art, Tom Stoppard's new play takes on the hard problem of consciousness – and loses

All the latest on newscientist.com: plastic planet, locked-in people get mind reader, princely prose, internet from the skies, how to perk up a mouse, and more

Scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland recently unveiled a flexible spinal implant called the electronic dura (or e-Dura) that they say may greatly improve spinal injury rehabi...

Some people who reject evolution and the Big Bang are educated and knowledgeable about science, new survey data suggests

Finding a boat where you want to put your building can be costly. A data analytics start-up will help companies guess what's in the ground before they dig