Science News

The Tim Hunt furore is a stark reminder that inequality in the lab needs addressing. And not just for the important reason of social justice

You may recall that late last year, a breakthrough in manufacturing occurred a few hundred miles above the Earth. After having sent a 3D printer to the International Space Station and printed...

Prior to the mid-18th century, it was tough to be a sailor. If your voyage required east-west travel, you couldn't set out to a specific destination and have any real hope of finding it efficiently.

When large chunks of ice break off of a glacier and plop with a giant splash into the chilly water, the result can be lots of thunderous shaking.

Florida panthers are getting a lifeline in newly protected territory, but will it be enough?

When a fighter jet takes off from a runway the same way that a skier launches gracefully off a jump, the result can be surprisingly beautiful.

Breast milk influences the community of bacteria that colonize the gut, but scientists are only now discovering exactly what it does.

Males compete for sex, females choose - ever since Darwin, we've assumed that's how nature works. Time for a rethink? (full text available to subscribers)

Electrical engineers have broken key barriers that limit the distance information can travel in fiber optic cables and still be accurately deciphered by a receiver. Photonics researchers at the University of California, ...

A diarrhea-causing parasite often transmitted through water is causing an increasing number of outbreaks in the United States linked with pools

Scientists first transcribed the genome--or complete genetic code--of a free living organism in 1995. Sequencing the bacterium H. Influenzae took a little over a year, cost about $1 million, and...

One by one, states are deciding sharks are more important than soup.

A Neptune-size planet with a giant plume of gas streaming behind it like a comet's tail has been discovered by astronomers, and is the first such planet ever discovered.

Now, even the most die-hard couch potatoes can summit one of the world's most imposing rock faces, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, using Google Street View.

Chimps do it. Hippos do it. Now sleepy elephants have been caught having an early morning yawn

In May India was struck by a deadly heatwave. Temperatures as high as 47°C caused 2,200 deaths. This week a heatwave in Pakistan claimed the lives of hundreds more. As the chart shows, the number of extreme weather- and...

Your friendly, neighbourhood muckspreaders A HOLLOW tree, you might reasonably suspect, is a dying tree. But often that is not the case, especially in the tropics. Lots of trees in tropical forests remain alive long afte...

DRONES may one day transform the way parcels are delivered, crops monitored and suspects apprehended. Those who talk up these possibilities, though, often neglect to mention the drawbacks of such robot aircraft--one of w...

RECEIVED wisdom, among both scientists and breeders, is that a modern, thoroughbred racehorse runs about as fast as it is possible for anything horse-shaped to run. Examinations of historical records, conducted over the ...

A landmark legal ruling ordering the Dutch government to cut emissions could be the first of many – and they might do what global treaties have so far failed to

Here's your bio: You've spent your life working on projects and jobs that allow both creativity and critical thinking. Sometimes you're hyperanalytical to the mild irritation of friends; other times, you're the most expr...

Tornadoes, fog and every type of weather in between take center stage in the new NOAA Weather in Focus photography contest.