New Scientist – News

New Scientist – News

The inactivation of one copy of the X chromosome in female mammals may start to fail as they get older, which may be why women have a higher risk of autoimmune conditions such as lupus

Plants are often celebrated for the parts that are easy to see – flower, leaves, fruit – but scientists are uncovering the secrets of their more mysterious underground networks

Simulations of the crust of early Earth show that cycles of pressure caused by geysers or tidal forces could have generated cell-like structures and even very simple proteins

DNA analysis of remains found at medieval sites has identified closely related strains of leprosy-causing bacteria in the bones of humans and a red squirrel

Migrating flies can carry pollen hundreds or thousands of kilometres, and this could help plants adapt to climate change

Strange bursts of radio waves called FRBs have long been mysterious, and one of the most famous sources of these flashes may have an unexpected planet

If all goes well, the Chang’e 6 probe will be the first ever to land on the far side of the moon to take samples and bring them back to Earth

The air and dust in climbing centres contain high levels of rubber particles from the soles of climbing shoes, some of which contain toxic additives

Climate change could be fueling bumblebee population loss by making hives too hot to handle

A male Sumatran orangutan chewed the leaves of a plant used in Indonesian traditional medicine and placed them on a wound on his face

People who were asked to recall past events that made them angry experienced a change to their blood vessels that has been linked with heart attacks

From an energy perspective, the move away from sodium vapour lamps to LEDs is great, but the news isn’t so good when it comes to light pollution. The way we illuminate the world needs to be part of our green agenda, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Levels of protection measles provided by the MMR jab fall by a small amount every year, according to mathematical modelling

An analysis of the 2021 German federal elections has found that for every 200,000 times a politician’s social media adverts were viewed, their vote share increased by 2.1 per cent – a potentially low-cost way of swinging elections

The record-breaking heat of 2023 has seen a rare disagreement break out between climate scientists, with some saying it shows Earth may have entered a new period of warming

Nostalgia isn’t only about a rose-tinted view of the past. This emotion can also be put to use in surprising places, says Agnes Arnold-Forster

Finnair has cancelled flights to Tartu in Estonia this month because of an ongoing GPS jamming attack – and there is evidence that the attack is being controlled from Russia

Corals can survive heat-related bleaching, but research from the Great Barrier Reef suggests a full recovery may take longer than we thought

By ignoring declining air pollution, regional climate models have greatly underestimated how hot Europe’s summers and heatwaves will become

The future prime minister of this increasingly powerful nation should be prepared to play a key role in global climate policy

A process to dissolve the mineral olivine in acid could provide a plentiful, energy-efficient material for carbon-negative cement

Chemists have found a link between the taste of a beverage and the shapes formed by its water and ethanol molecules, which explains why spirits like whisky taste more alcoholic at warmer temperatures

Disrupted gut microbiomes in male mice increase their offspring’s risk of low birth weight, stunted growth and premature death

A bristly bump on some mantises’ chests is a never-before-seen “gustifolium”, which may have evolved to help the insects with their highly specialised lifestyles

Spiked running shoes with a rubbery material between the inner and outer soles, and a stiff plate to improve stability, seem to help people move faster

Lunar settlers could avoid health problems like muscle wasting by running on the inside of a circular wall to mimic the pull of Earth’s gravity on the body

Total solar eclipses are astonishing, but travelling to get to one is less so – this episode of Dead Planets Society is all about rearranging the solar system to create a more convenient eclipse

A report found data privacy problems with the vast majority of 30 companies that sell neurotechnology devices to consumers. New US state laws aim to change that

A joint investment by the Australian federal government and the government of Queensland makes PsiQuantum one of the largest dedicated quantum computing firms in the world

India’s space agency has been remarkably successful in recent years, growing the country’s prestige on the global stage – and the 2024 election is unlikely to change that

As the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, climate policy decisions taken by India will shape the fate of the entire world. But can it continue to develop its economy while keeping carbon dioxide down?

Plastic production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than flying – at a summit in Canada, countries were divided on how to deal with this under-recognised part of the plastic problem

Red foxes and Arctic foxes dive headfirst into snow at up to 4 metres per second to catch small rodents, and the shape of their snouts reduces the impact force

Climate change means many tree species planted today in Europe won’t survive to the end of the century, but English oaks could thrive in many areas

A court in the Philippines revoked the permit to grow rice genetically modified to boost vitamin A, but the government is expected to appeal against the decision

An AI trained on the heart’s electrical activity alerted physicians about patients at high risk of dying, significantly reducing deaths in a clinical trial with almost 16,000 patients at two hospitals

Governments need to take action to protect people from potentially toxic additives in tyre rubber, say researchers after finding they can get into food from contaminated soil

As the US grapples with an ongoing bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle, the country’s health agencies are ramping up surveillance efforts and working to develop a vaccine if needed

Generative AI models designed to create images from text can be adapted to construct complex optical illusions – pictures that look like different things when viewed from far away or with motion blur

Commercial bowhead whaling ended in the early 20th century, but the industry’s lasting effects on the whales’ genetic diversity are leading to declines again

To celebrate the launch of our new event series in the US, kicking off with a masterclass on the brain and consciousness, we have made five incredible stories on that subject free to read

The genetic variant, which causes people to be insensitive to growth hormone, may also protect people from heart disease

When alpacas mate, males deposit sperm directly into the uterus, a reproductive strategy not confirmed in any other mammals

Before it shattered over Germany, the asteroid 2024 BX1 was clocked rotating once every 2.6 seconds – the fastest spin we have observed

In addition to the overall rise in sea level, the heights of tides are also changing as the oceans warm and separate into more distinct layers

Political campaigns are deploying AI-generated deepfake versions of politicians to reach hundreds of millions of eligible voters in India’s 2024 election – the world’s largest ever

The medicines nalmefene and naltrexone helped compulsive gamblers reduce their betting activities, trials have shown

In just 2 hours, small metal robots can capture most nanoscopic plastic particles from a sample of water

The neurons in wasp brains that help them recognise hive mates are similar to those in the brains of primates, including humans

The supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies may capture smaller black holes. Not only does this prove a place for the small black holes to grow, it also makes the supermassive ones look even bigger and brighter

The redness of asteroid 469219 Kamo‘oalewa marks it out as probably originating on the moon, and now we might know the exact impact crater it was launched from

Mice that had been genetically modified to lack the ability to smell could sniff out hidden cookies when sensory neurons from rats were grown in their brains

Two important barriers to a stable, powerful fusion reaction have been leapt by an experiment in a small tokamak reactor, but we don’t yet know if the technique will work in larger devices

Intensive breeding since the 19th century has created thousands of varieties of rose, but a reduction in genetic diversity could leave them vulnerable to diseases and climate change

AI companies are trying to impose safety measures on their chatbots, while researchers are finding ways around them all the time. Where will this end, asks Alex Wilkins

When fetuses and babies were exposed to sound stimuli, their brains’ subsequent activity appeared to be more complicated in the females than the males

More than 1.4 billion people live in India, giving its healthcare system a major role in planetary well-being. In the past 10 years, prime minister Narendra Modi has worked to improve India’s healthcare, but there is still much work to be done

Cancer has been one of the world’s most feared diseases for decades. But this “cancerphobia” no longer matches the evidence and is doing great harm, argues David Ropeik

India currently has a fairly small chip-manufacturing industry, but prime minister Narendra Modi wants the country to become a dominant player in the sector in just a few years

Almost all moon landers break down during the extraordinary cold of lunar night, but Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has astonishingly survived three nights

The very weak forces of attraction caused by the Casimir effect can now be used to manipulate microscopic gold flakes and turn them into a light-trapping tool

Targeted culling of crown-of-thorns starfish has resulted in parts of the Great Barrier Reef maintaining and even increasing coral cover, leading researchers to call for the programme to be dramatically scaled up

Some environmental campaigners claim that attempts to create a circular economy for plastics are doomed to fail – but the arguments can be disingenuous

Using genomic data from more than 9500 species, biologists have mapped the evolutionary relationships between flowering plants

A set of large, distinctive footprints suggest a raptor dinosaur that lived in East Asia 96 million years ago grew to a length of 5 metres

Obese mice that lost weight on a low-fat diet before getting a flu shot had better immune responses than those that lost weight afterwards, suggesting diet and weight loss influence vaccine efficacy

Six full-body fossils of Ptychodus sharks have been formally analysed for the first time, revealing that they were fast swimmers that preyed on shelled creatures

Climate change’s effects on ocean water temperatures and salinity could shrink sonar detection ranges underwater and make it more challenging to spot submarines

Amazon says it will create new jobs to replace roles taken over by machines, but it isn’t clear whether this will happen quickly enough

AI can analyse satellite images to reveal the movements of dark ships in a shadow fleet that smuggles oil and other cargo from sanctioned countries such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea

With severe climate impacts becoming more and more apparent, many scientists think we should explore ways to block out solar radiation, but doing so would be risky

Our blood sugar levels vary a lot from day to day, so results from continuous glucose monitors need to be interpreted with caution

In the 1920s, Erwin Schrödinger wrote an equation that predicts how particles-turned-waves should behave. Now, researchers are perfectly recreating those predictions in the lab

A group of around 40 scientists signed a declaration calling for formal acknowledgement of consciousness in a range of animals, including insects and fish – but the evidence is still lacking

As work begins on building the US’s first high-speed rail service – linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas – analysts say the project could serve as a blueprint for similar projects across the country

The finding that managed fires burn a much greater area than thought means we may be underestimating the increase in wildfires due to global heating

Forensic investigators can reliably measure drug and explosive residue using gels that lift fingerprint samples

Shading the planet by spraying aerosols into the stratosphere might stave off ice sheet collapse, modelling studies suggest, but we are running out of time

An Australian bull ant is the first animal known to use the patterns produced by polarised moonlight to navigate its environment

A mathematical model of a particle that remembers its past so that it never travels the same path twice produces stunningly complex patterns

One in five adults worldwide is living with fatigue. The general advice is to “do more” – but this isn’t the only solution to our exhaustion epidemic, says Amy Arthur

Underground tunnels created by lava flows provided humans with shelter for thousands of years beneath the hot desert landscape of Saudi Arabia

20 April is weed’s unofficial holiday. In honour of the special day, we collected our answers to all your cannabis questions. This is the science of 420

A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought

It can be difficult to figure out how to move a spacecraft from one orbit to another, but a trick from knot theory can help find spots where shifting orbits becomes easy

Carbon storage calculations don’t always take into account the effects of animals – when they eat, defecate and die, they help store lots of carbon

By measuring how birds’ vocal muscles move while they are asleep and using a physical model for how those muscles produce sound, researchers have pulled songs from the minds of sleeping birds

Both a special diet that excludes “FODMAP” compounds and a low-carb high-fibre diet were effective

Identical twins seem to experience more similar levels of pleasure when listening to music than non-identical twins, which suggests it has a genetic element

Curved wing tips inspired by the world’s heaviest flying bird could enhance the efficiency of wind turbines by of 10 per cent, according to simulations

Teams of staff usually return e-scooters to where they will be needed, but adapted scooters that can balance and stop themselves, and be controlled remotely, are a step towards autonomous ones that can take themselves wherever they have to go

Last year’s marine heatwaves saw an unprecedented decline in the growth of phytoplankton and algae, which many animals in the oceans depend on for food

Cocaine and morphine hijacked neural responses in the brains of mice, which resulted in them consuming less food and water

The vertebrae of Vasuki indicus, a snake that lived 47 million years ago, suggest it could have been as long as 15 metres

The jawbone of an ichthyosaur uncovered in south-west England has been identified as a new species, and researchers estimate that the whole animal was 20 to 25 metres long

Measurements of sulphur isotopes in Io’s atmosphere show that the moon may have been volcanically active for its entire lifetime

Cryptographers are scrambling to understand an algorithm that could undermine the mathematics behind next-generation encryption methods, which are intended to protect against quantum computers

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

Cloud seeding almost certainly did not play a significant role in the flooding on the Arabian peninsula this week – but the heavy rains may have been exacerbated by climate change

Negative thinking is unpopular but it could drive more realistic efforts to limit harm from global warming