Akshat Rathi, The Conversation and Declan Perry, The Conversation
Trillions of microbes live in and on our body. We don’t yet fully understand how these microbial ecosystems develop or the full extent to which they influence our health. Some provide essential nutrients…
The complexity in biology is astounding. That is why biologists are thankful that model organisms, like the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, can be used to breakdown biological processes into simpler…
Riding underwater on Darwin’s most popular bike path, on 1 February 2014.
Andrew Campbell
Rising sea levels are typically written about as a “threat to future generations” – something to worry about by 2050 or 2100, not now. But if you want to see why even relatively small increases in sea…
Those days need not remain in photographs.
carlos-smith
It is a sad fact that old age brings diseases. Many may not be life-threatening, but they make life less fun. One such condition is sarcopenia, which causes the loss of muscle mass and strength, and it…
We have fish to thank for the makeup of our face.
Flickr/Ben Shepherd
Lets face it – without a face no-one would recognise us, nor would we be able to guess what others might be thinking or feeling. Faces and their subtle degrees of symmetry and expression have defined human…
True fusion will be way more impressive than this.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Researchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature, scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy from fusion reactions…
The rate at which the world has warmed over the past 50 years and is likely to continue to do so in the future poses problems for life on land and in the ocean. Most species have a defined range of temperatures…
Damaged boats smashed together at Port Hinchinbrook harbour, the day after category 5 tropical cyclone Yasi hit north Queensland.
AAP/Dave Hunt
The number of tropical cyclones hitting Queensland and Western Australia has fallen to low levels not seen for more than 500 years, new research published in Nature shows. But while that’s seemingly great…
Virgo consortium: the web that holds the galaxies together.
Rich Murray
According to cosmologists, galaxies are joined together by filaments, quite literally. These filaments form the cosmic web and are made of mostly dark matter, many stars and some gas. Observing these filaments…
Large trees don’t slow down with age.
Michelle Venter
Large, older trees have been found to grow faster and absorb carbon dioxide more rapidly than younger, smaller trees, despite the previous view that trees’ growth slowed as they developed. Research published…
Understanding clouds is crucial to understanding whether temperatures will rise quickly in coming decades.
Visun Khankasem/Shutterstock.com
The amount of global warming we can expect in the future has been a tough question to pin down. A new study that I led with colleagues in France has enabled us to come up with a more accurate analysis…
Bankers aim to maximise profits. Scientists aim to understand reality. But Mike Peacey of the University of Bristol suggests, based on a new model he has just published in Nature, that both professionals…
Researchers have discovered how one of the world’s oddest mammals developed resistance to cancer, and there is hope that their work could help fight the disease in humans. Naked mole rats live underground…
Got one from the pack. Now, let’s cut things short.
Taraji Blue
Researchers have used gadget-laden collars to record cheetahs’ movements in the wild. They found that cheetahs succeed not because it is the fastest animal on land, but because of its incredible acceleration…
Artist illustration of how single molecules can be analysed.
Guoyan Wang and Yan Liang
The ultimate dream of nanotechnology is to be able to manipulate matter atom by atom. To do that, we first need to know what they look like. In what could be a major step in that direction, researchers…
It won’t look quite like that, though.
Josef Stuefer
Scientists in the US have developed a calculator from living cells, using old-fashioned analog programming. Their hope is that the technology could be used in the future to program cells to kill cancer…