Science News

If you are abstaining from sweets for Lent this year, here's what you can expect over the next 40 days.

A vast electric fence is being erected around Mount Kenya, one of the world's great refuges for wildlife. Will it help people and animals coexist?

An international team of researchers working at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has demonstrated that a bent silicon crystal can bend the paths of focused, very energetic electron beams mu...

Seven giant craters have mysteriously appeared in northern Siberia, possibly due to methane gas released from melting permafrost. And scientists think may be dozens more.

The International Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite can measure global precipitation (rain and snow) every 30 minutes.

Experiments in mice suggest that treatment of haemophilia could be more successful if the baby's immune system is primed while in the womb

A state-of-the-art optical atomic clock, collaboratively developed by scientists from the University of Warsaw, Jagiellonian University, and Nicolaus Copernicus University, is now "ticking away" at the National Laborator...

Sheets of programmable matter can be made to pop into complex 3D shapes 100 times taller than their original thickness when heated, and could find uses in medicine

The Pacific was a planetary air conditioner for the past two decades, but the relief may soon end, a new study finds.

Five groundbreaking experiments for a low-tech lab: from a solar storm detector in a jam jar to a Large Hadron Collider in your salad bowl (full text available to subscribers)

A new kind of flat, ultrathin lens has been created by Harvard physicists that can focus multiple colors of light in the same spot.Traditional lenses and other optical devices focus different colors in different places, ...

In science, it's commonly known that materials can change in a number of ways when subjected to different temperatures, pressures or other environmental forces.

A single gene that is found only in Homo species may partly explain why the human neocortex, the seat of higher cognitive functions, is so large.

The discovery of DNA in the southern part of the UK from what appears to be ancient wheat flour hints at a trade in what would have been a prestigious food

Explore the connections between engineering and science with KQED's new, free e-book, Engineering Is Saving the World with Cookstoves. Learn how researchers designed a new, more efficient cookstove to improve the quality...

Brain cells that help us predict the intentions of others before they've actively made a decision have been discovered in monkeys

These endangered sea turtles are facing a new threat: sand microbes encouraged by the decomposing eggs.

A new play uses the idea of paedophilia in a simulated reality to raise tough questions about how we should behave in virtual spaces

A 1,800-year-old tombstone was discovered at a Roman cemetery in England this week. The large stone slab bears an inscription to commemorate the deceased: a 27-year-old woman named Bodica.

If you're younger than 30, you've never experienced a month in which the average surface temperature of the Earth was below average.

All the latest on newscientist.com: why you need touch, the questions you're dying to ask about head transplants, and putting animals online

In science, it's commonly known that materials can change in a number of ways when subjected to different temperatures, pressures or other environmental forces.