Science News

The smallest machine of its kind in the world uses a single photon as its qubit and it can perform calculations without needing the cumbersome equipment to cool it down to near absolute zero.

Researchers have discovered two new brain pathways that modify movement and emotional decisions by controlling dopamine release. These pathways, found in the striatum, either stimulate or inhibit dopamine-producing neuro...

Nuclear fission--when the nucleus of an atom splits in two, releasing energy--may seem like a process that is fully understood. First discovered in 1939 and thoroughly studied ever since, fission is a constant factor in ...

Cannabis use in adolescents may lead to thinning of the cerebral cortex, a key brain region for cognitive function. Researchers found that THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, causes the shrinking of dendrites, which ...

Researchers Takuma Nakamura, Kazuki Hashimoto, and Takuro Ideguchi of the Institute for Photon Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo have increased by 100-fold the measurement rate of Raman spectroscopy, a co...

Viruses are everywhere. They're in the air; in sewage, lakes, and oceans; in grasslands and decaying wood. Some thrive in extreme conditions, like hydrothermal vents, Antarctic ice, and potentially even outer space. They...

The human brain can detect the structure of a short sentence in as little as 150 milliseconds, the speed of a blink. Using brain imaging, scientists found that the brain's language comprehension system processes sentence...

For the first time, an international cadre of electrical engineers has developed a new method for photonic in-memory computing that could make optical computing a reality in the near future.

New research has uncovered a simple neural circuit that connects hunger signals to jaw movements required for eating. Scientists identified a three-neuron pathway involving the hormone leptin and BDNF neurons, which cont...

Adding blade-like sails to tankers could reduce their annual fuel consumption by up to 30 per cent, slashing the climate impact of the shipping industry

What happens if AI is trained to write choral music by feeding it a specially created vocal dataset? Moving new exhibition The Call tackles some thorny questions about AI and creativity - and stirs the soul with music

Marie Curie redefined the role of women in science by training a generation of "lab daughters" to have stellar careers, shows Dava Sobel's detailed and intimate new biography, The Elements of Marie Curie

Feedback was feeling left out after failing to see the recent aurora borealis, but was delighted to find Meta providing an AI-generated version. Definitely absolutely just as good as the real thing

Greening our cities is a good thing, but it has to be done with an eye to the unfolding climate crisis of our times

For the first time since the discovery of the material MnBi2Te4 (MBT), researchers at the University of Twente have successfully made it behave like a superconductor. This marks an important step in understanding MBT and...

Spectrometers are technology for reading light that date back to the era of famed 17th-century physicist Isaac Newton. They work by breaking down light waves into their different colors--or spectra--to provide informatio...

U.S. health officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak of bacterial infections that has been linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders.

Four "potentially hazardous" space rocks, which are between 100 and 580 feet across, will all make their closest approaches to Earth within less than 12 hours of one another on Thursday (Oct. 24). Two of them were only d...

Geoenvironmental scientist Hiroto Nagai used publicly available climate data from the North and South poles to compose an ominous-sounding chamber music piece.

Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible

Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months - and now it's making the tool available to any AI developer

The systems we use to produce food have many problems, from horrifying waste to their dependence on fossil fuels. Vaclav Smil explains how to fix them