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People who gave up smoking cannabis had a memory boost within a week

30 October 2018

Smoking cannabis can impair memory, but a new study has found that giving up can partially reverse the effect after several days


Artists impression of Victorian famine

A freak 1870s climate event caused drought across three continents

30 October 2018

Few people have heard of it, but the global famine of 1876-78 probably killed 50 million, and it was triggered by a natural climate event that could easily recur


Orangutan mother and infant

Orangutans are exceptionally good at keeping their infants alive

30 October 2018

Over 90 per cent of orangutans survive childhood long enough to have their first baby, a feat human societies only achieved in the 1900s


A mysterious picture of a moon behind the moon

Earth may have a pair of 'ghost moons' made of dust trapped in orbit

29 October 2018

Photographs show signs of a ghost moon, a translucent gas cloud that orbits Earth along with our moon. But some say the images are not definitive


Jair Bolsonaro

Brazil’s new president will make it harder to limit climate change

29 October 2018

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, looks set to further weaken protections for the Amazon rainforest, a move that threatens efforts to limit climate change


Pacific crickets on Moloka’i are singing a new tune

Crickets rapidly evolve new mating call to evade their parasites

29 October 2018

In Hawaii, parasitic flies target singing crickets, forcing them to rapidly evolve to escape detection. Now some males have developed a special, seductive purr


Strange lines form a pattern

There is a weird new state of matter that can't be stirred or pushed

29 October 2018

Rigid light is a strange new state of matter. It’s somewhere between a solid and a superfluid, and can’t be stirred, rotated, or even pushed


Spending a lot of time in the sun can cause actinic keratoses

Creams remove skin sun spots with minimal pain and may prevent cancer

28 October 2018

Sun spots – or actinic keratoses – are caused by UV light. Now people are using medicated creams to remove them before they have a chance to turn cancerous


voles huddling together

Huddling for warmth gives animals a more efficient gut microbiome

28 October 2018

When animals huddle together in the cold their gut bacteria change in a way that slows down the animals’ metabolisms and helps them preserve energy


A person with a keyboard looks at a screen with CCTV footage

Search engine for CCTV lets you find people from their description

28 October 2018

Trawling through surveillance video for a suspect or missing person is slow work, but a new system can automatically match footage of people to their descriptions


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