Science

A new study has found that, among women with a high desire to avoid becoming pregnant, those who drank heavily had a 50% higher risk of becoming pregnant than those who drank moderately or not at all. In contrast, participants who used cannabis were no more likely to have an undesired pregnancy than participants who…

In south-east Asia, betel nut chewing has been practiced since antiquity. The plants contain compounds that enhance the consumer’s alertness, energy, euphoria, and relaxation. Although the practice is becoming less common in modern times, it has been deeply embedded in social and cultural traditions for thousands of years. Chewing betel nuts typically results in dark,…

If scientists are to better understand whether the genes that let us safely welcome the weekend with a cold beer or enjoy a bottle of wine with dinner began with apes eating fermented fruit, then the habit needs a name, according to a new study. “Scrumping” is the name coined in a paper led by…

The Sirius binary star system photographed with a neuromorphic camera Satyapreet Singh, Chetan Singh Thakur, Nirupam Roy, Indian Institute of Science Cameras that mimic human eyesight could have key advantages for astronomers, allowing them to capture extremely bright and dim objects in the same image and track fast-moving objects without motion blur. Traditional digital cameras…

A synthetic opioid 1000 times more potent than morphine is infiltrating the street drug trade in Adelaide, Australia, sparking fears of a wave of overdoses that could be lethal. In the first study of its kind in South Australia, University of South Australia researchers have detected traces of nitazene in samples of discarded injecting equipment,…

Neutrinos are extremely elusive elementary particles. Day and night, 60 billion of them stream from the Sun through every square centimeter of the Earth every second, which is transparent to them. After the first theoretical prediction of their existence, decades passed before they were actually detected. These experiments are usually extremely large to account for…

E. coli can cause severe illness, but is also often used in drug development VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY We have gone further than ever before in creating life that is unlike anything that has evolved naturally. The genome of an Escherichia coli bacterium has been redesigned on a computer to use just 57 of…

Potato tubers are the result of an ancient hybridisation event Jackie Bale/Getty Images The humble potato, it turns out, is the product of a tryst between an ancient tomato plant and a lesser-known South American lineage named Etuberosum. Etuberosum plants are often described as looking like a potato plant, except for one crucial difference –…

The Trump administration has announced a plan to scrap a landmark finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment, severely curbing the federal government’s ability to combat climate change. Known as the “Endangerment Finding”, the 2009 order from then-President Barack Obama allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules to limit pollution…