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Ancient artefacts unearthed from a Bronze Age city in modern-day Iraq could help shed light on the history of Mesopotamia. The objects date to about 1800 BCE and include a game board, large structural remains and clay tablets with cuneiform writing unlike anything found in the region. They are described in fieldwork summary published on […]

Before New Zealand’s giant flightless birds, moa, went extinct about 600 years ago, they played a critical role in the archipelago’s ecosystem. Their loss may have flow on effects for other species. The ecological role that moa played is still not fully understood. New research, published in Biology Letters, sheds light on the relationship between […]

A transient object has been detected by Australian radio astronomers which has the longest rotation of any such object yet discovered. It may help astronomers work out what makes these enigmatic long-period radio transient objects. Long-period radio transient objects are relatively new to science, having been first observed in about the past 10 years. They […]

People requesting abortions in England and Wales have been using less reliable contraception methods in the past decade, according to a new study. The report also shows a large increase in those using no contraception. The research, published in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, finds that fewer abortion patients are using reliable hormonal contraceptive methods, […]

The way clinicians diagnose obesity is set to change with new guidelines acknowledging that some obese people are perfectly healthy, while others live with chronic disease. “Obesity is a spectrum,” says Professor Francesco Rubino from the UK, who chaired the Commission that developed the guidelines. “You can have people who have excess body fat but […]

Engineers have come up with a way that the famous thought experiment, “Schrödinger’s cat”, could be used to detect errors in quantum computers. The thought experiment was derived by Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrödinger. In 1925, he came up with the Schrödinger equation which describes how particles behave in quantum mechanics. Just 10 years later, Schrödinger […]

Researchers perusing a Vietnamese seafood market have discovered a new species of crustacean that can weigh more than a kilogram. The discovery of the new supergiant isopod species, which can reach about 30cm, highlights how little is known of the deep-sea ecosystem in Southeast Asia. Supergiant isopods in the genus Bathynomus, also called sea bugs […]

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope to study distant quasars – the brightest objects in the universe – have captured a rare image that raises new questions about how they form. Quasars can reach luminosities thousands of times brighter than the Milky Way. They are caused by supermassive black holes at the cores of distant […]

Researchers have discovered what may be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin south of the French capital. The Ségognole 3 rock shelter, known since the 1980s for its artistic engravings of two horses in a Late Palaeolithic style on either side of a female pubic figuration, […]

A new framework using insights from the humanities and the social sciences could help prevent artificial intelligence (AI) tools from spreading misinformation and discriminatory content according to analysis from the UK. To address shortcomings of Large Language Model (LLM) systems, like ChatGPT, researchers targeted the databases on which the AI is trained and integrated principles […]

Dialysis – a method of treating kidney disease – might also be the best method for treating certain types of wastewater, according to a new study. The researchers, who have published a paper in Nature Water, are not suggesting we send expensive medical equipment to sewers. Instead, they’ve developed a method that uses the same […]

Fossils found in China dating to 535 million years ago are some of the oldest examples of a nervous system. They reveal how the first nervous systems evolved in early relatives of worms and insects. The new analysis, published in Science Advances, sheds light on the origins of ventral nerve cords – a major structure […]

A question that has puzzled oncologists for 30 years has been solved by researchers, who say their findings have implications for increasing the efficacy of radiation therapy. Radiation therapy works by damaging the DNA in cancer cells to trigger cell death. But not all cancerous cells inside of a tumour die in the same way […]

International monitoring bodies have confirmed 2024 as the warmest year on record, beating 2023 as the previous record-holder. The record was confirmed by 7 organisations: the World Meteorological Organization, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the UK’s Met Office, the USA’s NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

The first animals with mineral skeletons changed the way sediments develop on Earth forever, according to new research. Sediments are often modified by the mineral-rich skeletons of living organisms. Famously, the White Cliffs of Dover in southern England are made up of chalk created by the skeletons of tiny coccolith algae that sank to the […]

Geologists have highlighted new places to hunt for critical minerals like copper, cobalt and rare earth elements. Their study, published in Nature, helps to understand how molten rock under the Earth’s crust moves to push these metals to the surface. According to the researchers, critical metals are likely to be found at the edges of […]

Physicists have mathematically demonstrated that there may be particles in the universe that have long been thought impossible. Quantum mechanics research 100 years ago showed that all particles can be categorised into 1 of 2 groups: bosons and fermions. Which group they fall into depends on how the particles behave when near other particles in […]

Previous research has shown that ant colonies are more likely to behave aggressively towards neighbouring colonies, but less likely to do so against unfamiliar ones. It’s known as the “nasty neighbour effect” and, until now, researchers weren’t sure why it exists. A new Current Biology study has discovered that ants remember the smell of their […]

A study combining data from amateur and professional astronomers has stunned scientists by revealing that Jupiter’s clouds are not what we thought. It was previously believed that Jupiter’s clouds were made of ammonia ice. The new research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that they may actually be composed of ammonium hydrosulphide and […]

Frogs are sometimes described as not hopping, nor jumping, but “skittering” across the surface of water, almost appearing to levitate above it. But what does this skittering actually involve? Researchers have captured cricket frogs on camera to figure it out. “Skittering is not actually a well-defined word for this behaviour,” says Talia Weiss, a graduate […]

Researchers have developed a new way to identify gases at very low concentrations in just seconds. The technique could allow for highly sensitive, real-time sensors for applications in environmental monitoring and medical breath analysis. The approach, called coherently controlled quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy, can capture a complete methane spectrum in just 3 seconds where existing methods […]

A 3,000-year-old “mega fortress” in the Caucasus mountains has been mapped using drones, revealing the Bronze Age structure to be 40 times larger than previously thought. The fortress, named Dmanisis Gora, is about 65km southwest of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. Dmanisis Gora was built between 1500–500 BCE. At the time, other massive fortresses were being […]

Researchers have made bioluminescent “RNA lanterns” which make RNA glow. Their lanterns, described in Nature Communications, could help to better understand how cells work – in everything from virus research to the human brain. RNA, which transmits the information stored in DNA, plays a big role in the functioning of cells. “The first step in […]

A recent study suggests that new buildings and infrastructure could become huge sinks for carbon dioxide if they switched out their construction materials. Building materials that store carbon, like biomass-derived plastics and CO2 mixed into concrete, are at varying levels of technological readiness. The study, published in Science, suggests that if all building materials were […]