Victoria GillScience correspondent, BBC News Victoria Gill/BBC News My own dog seems a long way from a wild wolf If you, like me, have a spoiled, lazy dog that enjoys cheese flavoured treats, the fact that your pet’s ancestors were wild predators can seem unfathomable. But a major new study suggests their physical transformation from…
Available for over a year This week the UK government set out its vision for a world where the use of animals in science is eliminated in all but exceptional circumstances. Animal experiments in the UK peaked at 4.14 million in 2015 driven mainly by a big increase at the time in genetic modification experiments….
A possible “super-Earth” located less than 20 light-years from Earth is giving researchers renewed optimism in the search for planets that might host life. The newly identified world, GJ 251 c, earned its “super-Earth” label because current data indicate it is almost four times the mass of Earth and is likely a rocky planet. “We…
When bumble bees come up against invasive Argentine ants at feeding sites, they may win a direct confrontation but still return to the colony with less food. These encounters can leave bees with fewer resources even when they appear to come out ahead in a fight. Bumble bees already deal with significant challenges from pesticide…
Researchers are exploring a new generation of computers that operate using light, or photons, instead of electrical currents. Systems that rely on light to store and process information could one day run far more efficiently and complete calculations much faster than conventional machines. Light-driven computing is still at an early stage, and one of the…
New research from Rice University indicates that Jupiter dramatically reshaped the early solar system. According to the study, the giant planet created rings and wide gaps in the protoplanetary disk, helping to solve a long-standing mystery: why many primitive meteorites formed several million years after the very first solid materials. The work draws on hydrodynamic…
An international team of researchers has identified a previously unknown Neanderthal site on the southern edge of the Iberian Peninsula, located along Portugal’s Algarve coast. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports by Nature Publishing Group, describe the earliest evidence of Neanderthal hominids in Portugal. This discovery marks an important step forward in understanding…
Anxiety disorders affect roughly one in five people in the United States, making them among the most widespread mental health challenges. Although common, scientists still have many questions about how anxiety begins and is controlled within the brain. New research from the University of Utah has now pinpointed two unexpected groups of brain cells in…
Selfishness is an uncomfortably common biological phenomenon. Recent research showing how genetic mutations accumulate in sperm in middle and older age highlights this. Stem cells that emerge over time make it much more likely that sperm will have disease-causing mutations in older fathers – possibly up to 5 per cent of gametes by age 70,…
Mark Poynting,Climate reporter and Matt McGrath,Environment correspondent Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images The world’s burning of fossil fuels is set to release more planet-warming carbon dioxide than ever before this year, new figures show. It is another sign that efforts to fight climate change by cutting emissions are moving far too slowly to meet international…
