The drive to have green cars needs another step

3 February 2021

The Venetians gave us quarantine

3 February 2021

UK coronavirus variant gets nastier as South African variant spreads

2 February 2021

The faster-spreading UK coronavirus variant has acquired a mutation that will help it evade immune protection – the same mutation already found in the South African variant

African nations lead the world in offering PrEP HIV prevention drug

2 February 2021

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), medicine that can drastically reduce the risk of HIV infections, was once limited to Western nations, but now people in Africa make up more than half of the nearly 1 million global users

Naked mole rats mimic the dialect of their colony’s queen

28 January 2021

Colonies of naked mole rats share the same dialect, which may help them recognise friend from foe – and these are set by the colony’s queen

Flowering plants may be 100 million years older than we thought

28 January 2021

The oldest fossil flowers we have found are about 135 million years old, but a statistical analysis suggests flowering plants evolved as early as 250 million years ago

Strange death of Russian mountaineers may be due to unusual avalanche

28 January 2021

The Dyatlov Pass incident, which saw nine Russian mountaineers die in mysterious circumstances in 1959, has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, but now researchers say an unusual avalanche is to blame

Our dexterous thumbs have a 2 million-year-old origin

28 January 2021

Our thumbs allow us to use a variety of tools, from hammers to smartphones, and a new analysis of hominin fossils suggests they have a long history

Wood can easily be turned transparent to make energy-saving windows

27 January 2021

Glass windows are notoriously bad at keeping buildings insulated, and a simple new process for making sturdy transparent wood could provide a solution

Using hand gestures when we talk influences what others hear

27 January 2021

Similar words that have different meanings depending on the syllable stressed – like OBject and obJECT – are easier for a listener to distinguish if the speaker uses hand gestures