Science News

The shape of water. Can it tell us about what drives romance? Among fish, it might. Eva Kanso, a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering studies fluid flows and almost l...

The competition for a private firm to put a rover on the moon was cancelled in January when no firm seemed close enough. It's back now, but without a cash prize

A new study implicates the basolateral amygdala in conditioned taste aversion. The study could pave the way for treatments to curb taste aversions associated with chemotherapy and eating disorders.

The discovery that healthy, older adults produce just as many new neurons as young people could provide clues to how to keep our brains sharper for longer

A new study finds baby nerve cells even in very old brains. But the research remains controversial.

Researchers report synchrony of brain waves within three regions of the brain can 'break down' when visual working memory load becomes too extensive to handle.

Colonies of breeding king penguins behave much like particles in liquids do, according to a new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and international colleagues. This "liquid" organization and struct...

Creators of the endearing "Star Wars" droid BB-8 revealed how they constructed this adorable mechanical marvel.

Astronauts on long missions won't be able to bring all their tools with them. A new way of turning faeces into 3D-printable plastic may solve that problem

Physicists trying to understand the fundamental structure of nature rely on consistent theoretical frameworks that can explain what we see and simultaneously make predictions that we can test. On the smallest scale of el...

Everyone had died--not that you'd know it, from how they were laughing about their poor choices and bad rolls of the dice. As a social anthropologist, I study how people understand artificial intelligence (AI) and our ef...

To infinite profits and beyond THE Mahia peninsula, on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, has been a holidaymakers' haven for decades. It offers sandy beaches, hot springs and scenic trails. And, for those of ...

Spot the eye in the back of the head UNLIKE invertebrates, most of which have at least four eyes, vertebrates usually have only two. Yet, there are exceptions. Some fish, amphibians and reptiles have a third, so-called p...

PAST attempts to link personality to musical taste have foundered on the rocks of small sample sizes, culturally homogenous samples (usually of undergraduates at universities in rich countries) and the fact that most suc...

Reflecting on times past CUSTOMERS could, Henry Ford once quipped, have a car in any colour they wanted so long as it was black. In the end consumer choice got the better of him; cars now come in all manner of complexion...

A new method to sensitively measure the structure of molecules has been demonstrated by twisting laser light and aiming it at miniscule gold gratings to separate out wavelengths.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the largest religious monuments ever constructed.

By mimicking the intricate visual system of a butterfly, researchers have created a camera that provides surgeons with both a traditional color image as well as a near-infrared image that makes fluorescently labeled canc...

Spending on renewables in developed countries has halved since 2011, with investment levels in Europe falling back below the 2006 level

A team of Japanese researchers has discovered a new mechanism to explain stochastic resonance, in which sensitivity to weak signals is enhanced by noise. The finding is expected to help electronic devices become smaller ...

Researchers have found that an iron-containing mineral called dusty olivine, present in meteorites, retains a record of the magnetic field from the early solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. The results are surpris...

A South Korean university has dismissed fears it would work on killer robots. The dispute reflects growing worries over autonomous weapons, says Paul Marks