The UK’s chief scientist has said that both green technology and behavioural changes will be needed to tackle climate change Environment 27 October 2021 By New Scientist and Press Association Eating vegan food instead of meat reduces carbon emissionsJoshua Resnick/Shutterstock Tackling the climate crisis will require behavioural changes such as eating less meat and flying…
Many countries have seen sharp falls in the number of measles cases as a result of covid-19 controls, but the pandemic has also interrupted immunisation programmes Health 27 October 2021 By Alice Klein Sydney Airport in Australia looks deserted due to closed borders and travel restrictionsRobert Wallace/Wallace Media Network/Alamy Not a single case of measles…
After decades of looking, physicists are no closer to discovering theorised particles that could help solve ongoing problems in physics Physics 27 October 2021 By Leah Crane Part of the MicroBooNE neutrino experimentCindy Arnold The hunt for mysterious theoretical particles known as sterile neutrinos has turned up empty again. Neutrinos are extremely light subatomic particles…
Billions of years ago, bacteria began living inside other cells and carrying out essential functions. Genetic engineering could create new types of these ‘endosymbionts’ Health 27 October 2021 By Michael Le Page Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of Bacillus subtilisSTEVE LOWRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Bacteria have been genetically engineered to enter and live inside mouse immune…
Veganism is typically equated with healthy eating, but today’s factory-produced fake bacon, sausages and burgers could be tarnishing the halo of a plant-based diet. New Scientist investigates Health 27 October 2021 By Helen Thomson Kyle Bean DONALD Watson was born in Yorkshire and spent much of his youth on his uncle’s farm. But rather than…
Instances of sharks biting humans are rare, and researchers think they may happen when the marine predators confuse us for other species Life 26 October 2021 By Chen Ly Sharks may mistake surfers for sealsShutterstock / Dudarev Mikhail Humans and seals look remarkably similar in the water from a great white shark’s perspective, suggesting that…
Some seahorses pair for life, with the males carrying the pregnancies – but if the pair are separated for even a few days, the female seems to forget the male Life 26 October 2021 By Joshua Rapp Learn Lined seahorses (Hippocampus erectus) amongst corals, The BahamasShane Gross / naturepl.com Male seahorses are sometimes labelled nature’s…
More than a decade after Sri Lanka’s civil war ended, wild birds are still wary of humans in areas of the country that saw armed conflict Life 26 October 2021 By Jake Buehler A cattle egret stands near a roadway in Sri LankaMichael Weston Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted 26 years, coming to an end…
Standing a chance of staying under the Paris Agreement’s target of 1.5°C of warming would require annual emissions in 2030 to be 28 billion tonnes lower than what countries’ plans and pledges ahead of COP26 deliver Environment 26 October 2021 , updated 27 October 2021 By Adam Vaughan People take part in a ”Friday For…
By Michael Le Page , Clare Wilson , Jessica Hamzelou , Sam Wong , Graham Lawton , Adam Vaughan , Conrad Quilty-Harper , Jason Arunn Murugesu and Layal Liverpool Covid-19 testing is carried out at an NHS Test and Trace facility in Liverpool, England.Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Latest coronavirus news as of 11am on 27 October…
By Jason Arunn Murugesu Harold Urey (1893-1981) was a pioneering chemistUS DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A famous origin-of-life experiment from the 1950s may have more accurately mimicked nature than we initially thought. The influential Miller-Urey experiment showed that with just water, ammonia, hydrogen and methane – and electric sparks to mimic lightning – you…
Technology 25 October 2021 By Chris Stokel-Walker An artificial intelligence algorithm can transform still images into a high-resolution, explorable 3D world, with potential implications for film effects and virtual reality. By feeding the neural network a selection of images of a scene and a rough 3D model of the scene created automatically using off-the-shelf software…