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The man who reads dog minds and personalities in a brain scanner

23 August 2017

Gregory Berns coaxes dogs into MRI scanners to see what's going on in their heads. It even reveals if they would make good helpers for people with disabilities

The brothers who went missing on a glacier for almost 90 years

23 August 2017

In March 1926, three brothers and a friend climbed up to a hut overlooking the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland. They were never seen again – until their bones were found in 2012

The push for UK fracking may be 55 million years too late

22 August 2017

Cuadrilla is pressing ahead with a project to drill for shale gas in Lancashire, but a geologist thinks plans for industrial-scale fracking may be doomed

A lake in Antarctica where the R1S1 strain of Halorubrum lacusprofundi was discovered

Antarctic mystery microbe could tell us where viruses came from

21 August 2017

Viruses are not like other organisms and nobody is quite sure where they originated, but a newly discovered single-celled organism seems to offer a clue

Solving how fish swim so well may help design underwater robots

21 August 2017

Trout, dolphins and killer whales swim in remarkably similar ways – and a model of how they use little energy to do so may help design better aquatic robots

Grown-up chimps are less likely to help distressed friends

18 August 2017

Chimpanzees of all ages will comfort upset companions, but adult chimps do it less – perhaps because they are more selective about who they help

Monkeys can be tricked into thinking all objects are familiar

17 August 2017

There is a cluster of neurons in monkeys’ brains that decides whether or not they have seen objects before, and stimulating it makes them see everything as familiar

Weird creatures are spreading polluting plastic through the sea

16 August 2017

Plastic particles sink to the seabed after being eaten and excreted by animals called larvaceans, which could be why we see less floating plastic than expected