Science News

All of nature's bewildering complexity can be reduced to a four letter code--DNA's four bases: A, T, C, and G. But now scientists have shown the language at the heart of life is not set in stone by getting bacteria to bu...

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory compared similar materials and returned to a long-established rule of electron movement in their quest to explain the phenomenon of extremely large magnetores...

(Rochester Institute of Technology) Rochester Institute of Technology astrophysicist Jeyhan Kartaltepe will be one of the first scientists to use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope soon after it launches in spring 2019. T...

A supernova that stayed bright for over three years seemed impossible, but it could be explained if the explosion is running into dense rings of dust and gas

What is it that makes us trust one politician over another? Surely vision and values are key, but as science demonstrates, we are influenced by much subtler things as well. It turns out that our perception of political l...

Rice University physicists dedicated to creating the working components of a fault-tolerant quantum computer have succeeded in creating a previously unseen state of matter.

The head of the multinational nuclear fusion project known as ITER, in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump's administration, has warned US budget cuts could delay completion of the experimental reactor.

Scientists at DESY have developed novel lenses that enable X-ray microscopy with record resolution in the nanometre regime. Using new materials, the research team led by DESY scientist Sasa Bajt from the Center for Free-...

Researchers have developed a new imaging system that is designed to monitor the health of crops in the field or greenhouse. The new technology could one day save farmers significant money and time by enabling intelligent...

Picture a robot. In all likelihood, you just pictured a sleek metallic or chrome-white humanoid. Yet the vast majority of robots in the world around us are nothing like this; instead, they're specialized for specific tas...

ONE theory to explain the low share of women in senior academic jobs is that they have less self-confidence than men. This hypothesis is supported by data in a new working paper, by a team of researchers from five univer...

SHELLFISH thrive in waters rich in nutrients. These include the nitrogen used in fertiliser, which passes from the land into rivers and then into the sea. The shellfish grow, as do the profits of those who harvest them. ...

DEVICES for analysing DNA used to be big, clunky and not very good. Hundreds were required for the initial sequencing of the human genome, a project that started in the late 1990s and took over a decade to complete at a ...

Satellite photos show just how big and destructive the Southern California wildfires have become.

High doses of the vitamin biotin in a person's blood can cause errors in some medical lab tests, and these faulty test results have already been linked to one death, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FD...

What is DNA? DNA is a molecule that contains the instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce.

Two gene variants have been found to be more common in gay men. New Scientist looks at what this tells us about the way biology shapes our sexuality

Sleep paralysis can be terrifying, but what causes it? A new review of 42 studies looks for the links between sleep paralysis, stress, supernatural beliefs, and other possible factors.

About 75 million years ago, an odd dinosaur walked from land into the water, where it used its flipper-like arms to swim in the ocean.

The oddball sported a swan-like neck and flippers that possibly helped it swim.

An AI trained to improvise jokes around topics suggested by an audience is testing the ways we perceive and interact with intelligent machines

The heaviest fish in the sea is also very strange.